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'    U  i  /  c  I       V  d6-/O>  li 

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WILLIAM  JAMES 


33 p  Shlliam 


THE  VARIETIES  OF  RELIGIOUS  EXPERIENCE:  A  STUDY  IN 
HUMAN  NATURE.  Gifford  Lectures  delivered  at  Edinburgh  in  1901- 
1902.  8vo.  New  York,  London,  Bombay,  and  Calcutta:  Longmans, 
Green  &  Co.  100*. 

PRAGMATISM :  A  NEW  NAME  FOR  SOME  OLD  WAYS  OF  THINK- 
ING: POPULAR  LECTURES  ON  PHILOSOPHY.  8vo.  New  York, 
London,  Bombay,  and  Calcutta :  Longmans,  Green  &  Co.  1907. 

THE  MEANING  OF  TRUTH  :  A  SEQUEL  TO  "PRAGMATISM."  8vo. 
New  York,  London,  Bombay,  and  Calcutta :  Longmans,  Green  &  Co. 
1909. 

A  PLURALISTIC  UNIVERSE:  HIBBERT  LECTURES  ON  THE 
PRESENT  SITUATION  IN  PHILOSOPHY.  8vo.  New  York,  Lon- 
don, Bombay,  and  Calcutta:  Longmans,  Green  &  Co.  1909. 

SOME  PROBLEMS  OF  PHILOSOPHY:  A  BEGINNING  OF  AN  IN- 
TRODUCTION TO  PHILOSOPHY.  8vo.  New  York,  London,  Bom- 
bay,  and  Calcutta :  Longmans,  Green  &  Co.  1911. 

THE  WILL  TO  BELIEVE,  AND  OTHER  ESSAYS  IN  POPULAR 
PHILOSOPHY.  i2mo.  New  York,  London,  Bombay,  and  Calcutta: 
Longmans,  Green  &  Co.  1897. 

MEMORIES  AND  STUDIES.    8vo.    New  York,  London, Bombay,  and 

Calcutta:  Longmans,  Green  &  Co.    1911. 
THE    PRINCIPLES    OF    PSYCHOLOGY.    »  vols.,  8vo.    New  York: 

Henry  Holt  &  Co.     London:  Macmillan  &  Co.     1890. 
PSYCHOLOGY:    BRIEFER    COURSE.      i2mo.     New  York:  Henry 

Holt  &  Co.    London :  Macmillan  &  Co.     1892. 

TALKS  TO  TEACHERS  ON  PSYCHOLOGY:  AND  TO  STUDENTS 
ON  SOME  OF  LIFE'S  IDEALS.  i2mo.  New  York :  Henry  Holt 
&  Co.  London,  Bombay,  and  Calcutta :  Longmans,  Green  &  Co.  1899. 

HUMAN  IMMORTALITY:  TWO  SUPPOSED  OBJECTIONS  TO  THE 
DOCTRINE.  i6mo.  Boston :  Houghton  Mifflin  Co.  1898. 


THE  LITERARY  REMAINS  OF  HENRY  JAMES.  Edited,  with  an 
Introduction,  by  William  James.  With  Portrait.  Crown  8 vo.  Boston : 
Houghton  Mifflin  Co.  1885. 


WILLIAM  JAMES 


BY 
EMILE   BOUTROUX 


MEMBRE   DE    L  INSTITUT 


TRANSLATED  FROM   THE  SECOND  EDITION 

BY 
ARCHIBALD   AND   BARBARA  HENDERSON 


LONGMANS,    GREEN,    AND    CO 

FOURTH  AVENUE  &  SO-ra  STREET,  NEW  YORK 
LONDON,   BOMBAY,   AND   CALCUTTA 

1912 


COPYRIGHT,   1912 
BY  LONGMANS,   GREEN,  AND  CO. 


THE-  PLIMPTON-  PRESS 

[  W  D-O] 
NORWOOD  •  MASS  •  U  •  S  •  A 


INTRODUCTION 

J.  HE  illustrious  American  philosopher, 
Professor  William  James,  lost  to  his  coun- 
try and  the  world  on  August  26th,  1910, 
was  so  remarkable  as  a  man,  aside  from 
his  doctrines,  that  it  would  be  of  the  greatest 
interest  to  study  for  its  own  sake  his  inner 
life,  his  soul,  his  character,  his  wit,  his 
conversation  and  his  style, — in  a  word,  his 
personality.  May  his  brother  whom  he 
loved  so  tenderly,  and  upon  whom  to  his 
last  hour  he  lavished  an  admirable  devotion 
—  may  the  great  writer,  Henry  James,  with 
all  his  tenderness,  his  power  of  analysis 
and  his  art,  paint  this  cherished  portrait! 
It  would  materially  assist  us  in  compre- 
hending the  doctrine  of  the  philosopher. 
For  whereas,  in  certain  men,  the  personality 
and  the  work  are  so  actually  separable 
that  in  order  to  understand  the  one  it  is 
necessary,  if  not  to  ignore  at  least  to  dis- 
regard the  suggestions  afforded  by  the 
[v] 


INTRODUCTION 


other,  with  William  James  it  is  quite  the 
reverse.  He  taught  that  a  philosophy  has 
its  root  in  life,  not  in  the  collective  or 
impersonal  life  of  humanity,  in  his  view 
the  abstraction  of  the  schools,  but  in  the 
concrete  life  of  the  individual,  the  only 
life  which  really  exists.  And  just  as  the 
flower  separated  from  its  stalk  is  not  slow 
to  wither,  so  James  thought  that  philosophy, 
even  in  its  boldest  speculations,  should 
maintain  its  bond  with  the  soul  of  the  thinker 
if  it  is  not  to  degenerate  into  an  empty 
assemblage  of  words  and  of  concepts,  de- 
void of  all  real  content. 

If,  for  our  part,  we  can  make  no  pre- 
tensions to  give  new  life  to  the  fine  image 
of  William  James,  let  us  at  least  try  to 
observe  some  features  of  his  physiognomy; 
above  all,  let  us  yield  ourselves  gladly  to 
the  vivid  impression  which  his  personality 
of  itself  produced  upon  everyone  who  came 
in  contact  with  it,  so  that  we  may  communi- 
cate with  him  sympathetically  and  by  that 
means  in  some  measure  read  his  inward 
soul. 

[vi] 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

INTRODUCTION v 

LIFE  AND  PERSONALITY  OF  WILLIAM 

JAMES 3 

PHILOSOPHY  OF  WILLIAM  JAMES    ...  19 

I.  PSYCHOLOGY 19 

II.     RELIGIOUS  PSYCHOLOGY  ....  41 

III.  PRAGMATISM 56 

IV.  METAPHYSICAL  VIEWS     ....  82 
V.     PEDAGOGY 94 

CONCLUSION  .  114 


[vii] 


WILLIAM  JAMES 


LIFE  AND  PERSONALITY  OF 
WILLIAM  JAMES 


ILLIAM  JAMES  was  born  in  New 
York  City,  January  llth,  1842.  He 
was  the  eldest  son  of  the  Rev.  Henry 
James  of  Boston,  famous  both  as  theo- 
logian and  as  writer.  In  outward  appear- 
ance he  bore  a  striking  resemblance  to 
his  father.  The  Rev.  Henry  James  ex- 
hibited a  curious  combination  of  gaiety 
and  gravity,  keen  thought  and  great 
depth  of  feeling,  with  a  turn  for  quip 
and  jest.  These  traits  were  found  in 
equal  measure  in  his  son  William.' 

The  interests  of  the  Rev.  Henry  James 
were  principally  confined  to  religious 
questions.  In  these  matters,  he  was 
an  ardent  disciple  of  the  great  Swedish 
savant,  Swedenborg. 

The  point  of  departure  for  these  famous 
doctrines  which  held  so  much  interest 
for  Kant,  was  the  conviction  —  a  con- 

[3] 


WILLIAM     JAMES 


viction  which  Swedenborg  had  reached 
from  a  study  of  the  animal  kingdom  — 
of  the  existence  of  a  constant  mutual 
influence  between  the  mental  and  the 
material,  between  the  spiritual  and  the 
natural.  From  that  point,  Swedenborg, 
by  the  study  of  religion  as  described  in 
the  Scriptures,  had  risen  to  the  idea  of 
a  relation  between  terrestrial  beings  and 
the  beings  of  the  spiritual  world,  with 
the  resultant  possibility  of  knowing  di- 
rectly religious  truths,  and  from  this 
knowledge  deriving  a  purified  Chris- 
tianity as  a  foundation  for  the  New 
Jerusalem. 

During  his  early  years  William  James 
was  deeply  impressed  by  his  father's 
teachings.  Not  only  did  he  acquire  a 
remarkable  aptitude  for  analysis,  but 
he  saturated  himself  so  thoroughly  with 
the  Swedenborgian  spirit  that  he  seems 
to  have  preserved  throughout  his  life  a 
secret  predilection  for  the  doctrines  of 
the  great  mystic. 

William  James's  course  of  studies  was 
not  a  very  methodical  one.  His  father 
[4] 


LIFE     AND     PERSONALITY 

having  gone  to  live  for  a  time  in  Europe, 
William  James  early  familiarized  him- 
self with  European  languages  and  culture. 
He  received  instruction  from  special  tu- 
tors in  London  and  Paris.  In  1857-8, 
he  attended  the  college  of  Boulogne-sur- 
Mer;  and  in  1859-60  he  studied  in  the 
University  of  Geneva.  Then  during  the 
winter  of  1860-61  he  studied  painting,^ 
under  the  direction  of  William  M.  Hunt, 
at  Newport,  Rhode  Island. 

But  the  taste  for  science  was  upper- 
most in  his  nature.  In  1861,  at  the  age 
of  nineteen,  he  entered  the  Lawrence 
Scientific  School  at  Harvard.  For  two 
years  he  studied  chemistry  and  anatomy 
there.  Then  in  1863  he  entered  the 
Harvard  Medical  School.  Although  he 
purposed  taking  the  doctorate  in  medi- 
cine, he  did  not  confine  himself  to  pur- 
suit of  the  ordinary  course  of  study.  In 
April,  1865,  with  Louis  Agassiz,  he  took 
part  in  the  Thayer  Expedition  to  Brazil, 
and  remained  there  more  than  a  year. 
During  the  winter  of  1867-8  he  studied 
physiology  at  the  University  of  Berlin, 

[5] 


WILLIAM     JAMES 


then  worked  with  Agassiz  at  the  Harvard 
Museum  of  Comparative  Zoology.  In 
1869,  he  took  his  doctorate  in  medicine 
at  Harvard.  Until  1872  he  continued 
to  work  according  to  his  fancy,  assum- 
ing no  professional  obligations,  partly 
because  of  his  ill-health,  partly  because 
of  his  intellectual  curiosity,  his  eagerness 
for  varied  knowledge,  to  say  nothing  of 
a  certain  instinctive  repugnance  to  official 
duties. 

In  1872,  at  Harvard,  began  William 
James's  academic  career,  which  was  to 
run  its  whole  course  at  the  same  university. 
He  started  as  an  instructor  in  physiology. 
Then,  from  1873  to  1876,  he  was  an 
instructor  in  anatomy  and  physiology. 
Beginning  in  1875,  he  offered  to  graduate 
students  a  course  dealing  with  the  rela- 
tions between  physiology  and  psychology. 
He  directed  the  experimental  researches 
in  a  room  in  the  Lawrence  Scientific 
School:  this  was,  we  may  say,  the  first 
psychological  laboratory  established  in 
v  America.  In  1879-80,  he  gave  his  first 
real  course  in  philosophy,  which  was 
[6] 


LIFE     AND     PERSONALITY 

entitled:  The  Philosophy  of  Evolution.  At 
that  time  he  had  given  up  the  teaching 
of  anatomy  and  physiology. 

In  1880  he  became  assistant  professor 
of  philosophy.  Several  years  later,  in 
1884  to  be  exact,  he  took  part  in  the 
establishment  of  the  American  Society 
for  Psychical  Research.  In  1885,  he 
was  made  professor  of  philosophy,  and 
in  1889  he  took  the  chair  of  psychology. 

During  this  period  he  wroteNjiis  great 
work,  Principles  of  Psychology  (1890), 
in  two  large  volumes,  the  importance  of 
which  was  at  once  recognized  through- 
out the  entire  world.  \This  sufficed  to 
assure  him  a  foremost  place  in  the  his- 
tory of  the  philosophic  movement  of  our 
time:>  In  1892  he  published  an  abridg- 
ment of  this  work,  Psychology,  Briefer 
Course,  or  A  Text-Book  of  Psychology, 
which  still  further  added  to  his  re- 
nown and  influence,  and  was  soon  widely 
adopted  as  a  manual  of  psychology  in 
the  American  colleges  and  universities. 

In  1892  he  abandoned  the  direction  of 
the  psychological  laboratory,  and  in  1897 
[7] 


WILLIAM     JAMES 


exchanged  his  title  of  professor  of  psy- 
chology for  that  of  professor  of  philoso- 
phy, which  he  was  to  retain  to  the  end  of 
his  life.  His  famous  article,  The  Will  to 
Believe,  appeared  in  1896.  /  And  his  col- 
lected lectures  entitled  Talks  to  Teachers 
on  Psychology  and  to  Students  on  some 
of  Life's  Ideals,  which  immediately  won 
extraordinary  success,  and  even  to-day 
is  eagerly  read  throughout  the  world, 
dates  from  1899. 

It  was  in  this  very  year,  1899,  that 
his  health,  always  delicate,  underwent  a 
change  for  the  worse.  /  An  excess  of  fa- 
tigue, doubtless  caused  by  an  excursion  in 
the  Adirondacks,  brought  on  a  weakness 
of  the  heart  which  kept  him  away  from 
his  university  during  the  years  1899-1901. 

Nevertheless,  the  period  extending  from 
this  time  until  his  death  was  probably 
the  most  productive  and  most  brilliant  of 
his  entire  career.  In  1901  and  1902,  as 
lecturer  on  the  Giff ord  Foundation,  he 
gave  at  the  University  of  Edinburgh  his 
famous  course  of  lectures  upon  ^\The 
Varieties  of  Religious  Experience,  which, 
[8] 


LIFE     AND     PERSONALITY 

when  published  in  1902,  was  the  signal 
for  a  noteworthy  movement  of  ideas  in 
the  domain  of  religious  psychology,  and 
for  the  second  time  exhibited  William 
James  as  a  pioneer.") 

In  1906  and  in  1907,  at  the  Lowell 
Institute  in  Boston,  and  at  Columbia 
University,  New  York,  he  gave  some 
lectures  on  \" Pragmatism"  which,  pub- 
lished in  1907,  likewise  created  a  very 
great  sensation.  \ 

Finally,  at  the  general  request  of  pro- 
fessors and  pupils,  he  devoted  himself 
to  the  task  of  assembling  his  ideas  and 
presenting  them  in  their  logical  co-ordi- 
nation, in  a  manual  or  Text-Book  similar 
to  the  one  he  had  written  to  embody  his 
psychology.  He  had  written  only  one 
part  of  this  work  when  he  set  out  for 
Europe,  for  the  purpose  of  consulting 
specialists  as  to  the  state  of  his  health, 
which  had  grown  worse. 

In  spite  of  the  fact  that  during  this 
trying  and  painful  voyage  the  gravity  of 
his  illness  became  more  and  more  appar- 
ent, William  James  continued  to  lavish 

[9] 


WILLIAM     JAMES 


upon  his  friends,  just  as  if  he  were  in  his 
normal  condition,  the  treasures  of  his 
mind  and  heart. 

Immediately  upon  his  return  to 
America,  to  the  country  village  of  Cho- 
corua  in  New  Hampshire,  he  had  an 
attack  of  heart  failure;  and  after  linger- 
ing about  a  week  he  died  on  August  26, 
1910,  at  the  age  of  68.1 


The  lif e  of  Professor  James  was4  entirely 
devoted  to  studying,  experimenting,  ob- 
serving, reading,  reflecting,  investigating, 
instructing,  talking  and  writing./  He  knew 

1  The  principal  works  of  William  James  are:  articles 
published  in  the  Critique  Philosophique  of  Renouvier, 
Paris,  1870,  1880,  1881;  Principles  of  Psychology,  2 
vols.,  1890;  Psychology,  Briefer  Course  (A  Text-Book 
of  Psychology),  1892,  a  work  translated  into  French 
by  E.  Baudin  and  G.  Bertier  under  the  title:  Precis  de 
Psychologie,  1909;  The  Witt  to  Believe  and  other  Essays 
in  Popular  Philosophy,  1897,  some  of  which  essays 
appeared  in  French  translation  in  the  Critique  Philoso- 
phique;  Human  Immortality,  Two  supposed  Objections, 
to  the  Doctrine,  1897;  Talks  to  Teachers  on  Psychology, 
and  to  Students  on  Life's  Ideals,  1899,  the  first  part  of 
which  has  been  translated  into  French  by  L.  S.  Pidoux, 

[10] 


LIFE     AND     PERSONALITY 

a  great  deal,  thanks  to  his  lively  intellec- 
tual curiosity,  his  powerful  and  precise 
memory,  his  knowledge  of  languages,  his 
love  of  books,  and  his  innumerable  asso- 
ciations in  every  country.  But  he^ appre- 
ciated only  the  judgments  immediately 
drawn  from  observation  of  realities  and 
constantly  controlled  by  this  same  obser- 
vation. >  He  regarded  as  negligible  any 
formula  which  could  not  be  translated 
into  a  fact  of  experience.  >-  One  word  was 
constantly  upon  his  lips,  expressing  that 

with  the  title,  Causeries  pedagogiques,  Lausanne  and 
Paris,  1909;  The  Varieties  of  Religious  Experience,  A 
Study  in  Human  Nature,  being  the  Gifford  Lectures  on 
Natural  Religion  delivered  at  Edinburgh,  in  1901-1902, 
1902,  a  work  translated  into  French  by  Frank  Abauzit, 
with  the  title:  L 'Experience  religieuse,  1906;  Pragma- 
tism, a  New  Name  for  some  Old  Ways  of  Thinking, 
1907;  A  Pluralistic  Universe,  Hibbert  Lectures  at  Man- 
chester Cottege  on  the  Present  Situation  in  Philosophy, 
1909;  a  French  translation  of  this  work,  by  Le  Brun  and 
Paris,  appeared  in  1910,  entitled,  why  we  cannot 
imagine:  Philosophic  de  I' Experience;  The  Meaning 
of  Truth,  a  Sequel  to  "Pragmatism,"  1909;  in  addition, 
a  great  number  of  magazine  articles,  notably  in  Mind, 
The  Journal  of  Philosophy,  Psychology  and  Scientific 
Methods,  The  Philosophical  Review,  The  Princeton 
Review,  The  Harvard  Graduates'  Magazine,  Scribner's 
Magazine,  The  Forum,  The  Proceedings  of  the  Society 
for  Psychical  Research,  Science,  The  Nation,  etc. 

[ii] 


WILLIAM     JAMES 


mode  of  thought  which  he  especially 
prized:  the  word  direct.  He  rather  en- 
joyed hurling  facts,  brutal  experience, 
life,  common  sense,  those  ordinary,  com- 
mon and  familiar  things  so  dear  to 
Pascal,  into  the  midst  of  the  scholarly 
systems,  the  lofty  phrases,  the  sacro- 
sanct traditions  of  the  scholastic,  ancient 
and  modern. 

Among  those  students  who  flocked  to 
his  lectures,  many  came  chiefly  to  obtain 
ready-made  answers  in  view  of  their  ex- 
aminations; \but  he  took  no  pains  to 
satisfy  them,  jyith  all  the  fine  freshness 
of  his  vivacity  and  verve,  he  gave  his 
audience  the  result  of  his  researches  and 
of  his  personal  reflections  upon  the  prob- 
lems which  absorbed  him,  without  so 
much  as  recalling  the  existence  of  an 
academic  programme./  To  illustrate,  one 
of  his  hearers  one  day  interrupted  him 
with  these  words:  "To  be  serious,  for  a 
moment." 

This  very  clever  and  eloquent  pro- 
fessor "professed"  as  little  as  possible. 
He  was  incapable  of  binding  himself  by 

[12] 


LIFE     AND     PERSONALITY 

the  rules  of  official  pedagogy.  He  threw 
into  his  speech  his  ceaselessly  active 
thought,  his  ardent  soul,  his  whole  being. 
Whether  he  taught  in  his  own  class  room 
or  lectured  outside,  whether  he  conversed 
familiarly  with  his  friends,  the  spontane- 
ity of  his  discourse  was  always  arresting. 
Everything  he  said  was  full  of  pith 
and  suggestion,  and  he  never  expressed 
himself  in  a  conventional,  abstract  and 
impersonal  way.  His  ideas  left  his  brain 
thoroughly  alive  and  impregnated  with 
his  personality;  the  most  unexpected, 
ingenious,  and  amusing  expressions  fell 
naturally  from  his  lips  and  fixed  them- 
selves in  the  minds  of  his  hearers,  who 
were  at  once  surprised,  charmed,  and 
inspired  to  think  for  themselves.  There 
was  never  a  more  perfect  illustration 
of  the  too  frequently  quoted  saying  of 
Pascal:  "We  are  delighted  when  we  ex- 
pect to  see  an  author  and  find  a  man." 

He    wrote    just    as    he    talked.     Was 
there,  in  his  case,  any  great  difference 
between  the  two  occupations?    In  read- 
ing his  works,  we  seem  to  hear  him  speak. 
[13] 


WILLIAM     JAMES 


In  the  arrangement  of  his  ideas,  there  is 
that  same  subtle  order,  free  and  lively — 
Pascal's  "the  order  of  the  heart" — more 
profound  and  possibly  truer  than  the  gross 
and  palpable  order  of  geometric  demon- 
stration. There  is  the  same  picturesque, 
personal  language,  full  of  ingenuities  and 
suggestive  images.  There  is  the  same 
vivacity,  the  same  vigour  of  attack  and 
of  argument.  There  is  also  a  superior 
elegance,  marvellous  mixture  of  knowl- 
edge, precision,  nicety,  force,  natural- 
ness, grace,  and  a  sort  of  abandon. 
Consequently,  this  profound  and  trust- 
worthy thinker  is,  without  exerting  him- 
self to  that  end,  an  author,  an  artist,  one 
of  the  glories  of  American  literature  as 
well  as  of  its  philosophy.  And  among 
other  merits,  his  works  possess  this  rare 
attribute:  they  are  read. 

The  life  bodied  forth  so  directly  by 
,this  learning  and  these  works  is,  in  its 
extreme  simplicity,  one  of  incomparable 
moral  richness. 

While  certain  thinkers  devote  them- 
selves to  transforming  immediate  realities, 
[14] 


LIFE     AND     PERSONALITY 

along  with  the  passions,  the  conflicts 
and  the  gropings  which  they  involve, 
into  pure  ideas,  abstract,  rigid  and  im- 
passable, and  to  observing  in  some  fashion 
changing  things  in  the  guise  of  changeless 
eternity,  for  William  James  ideas,  as  such, 
possess  meaning  and  value  in  direct  pro- 
portion to  the  measure  of  life  that  they 
retain  ;/vand  every  activity  of  his  mind  is 
a  cordial  participation  in  the  emotions, 
the  labours,  and  the  present  tasks  of  his 
country  and  of  humanity./'  He  does  not 
merely  give  expression,  as  an  exception- 
ally well  informed  man  and  subtle  critic, 
to  his  views  upon  the  conditions  of  his 
great  philosophic  problems,  such  as  the 
methods  and  the  significance  of  science, 
the  relations  between  science  and  religion, 
education,  the  value  of  suffering,  con- 
flict and  war,  the  ideal  form  of  human 
life.  >  In  his  own  mind  he  sees  himself 
actually  facing  alternatives  evoked  by 
these  questions,  and  he  deals  with  and 
resolves  these  questions  with  all  the 
force  of  his  being,  as  everyone  does  when 
he  feels  that  a  question  concerns  himself, 
[15] 


WILLIAM     JAMES 


and  not  merely  other  people.  >  Hence 
the  personal  and  sympathetic  note  of  his 
words.  He  moved  the  souls  of  his  ques- 
tioners, because  he  spoke  from  his  own 
soul.  > 

Moreover  he  brought  to  the  study  of 
the  problems  of  life  exceptional  virility 
and  loftiness  of  view.  <He  had  a  proud 
and  courageous  soul;  and  this  pride  was 
founded  upon  a  simple  trust  in  the  in- 
junctions of  morality  and  the  generous 
enthusiasms  of  religion. y  He  had  the 
instinct  for  sympathy  and  love,  for 
sacrifice,  for  the  asceticism  which  disci- 
plines the  will,  for  the  heroism  consecrated 
to  the  ideal./  He  had  little  taste  for 
protestations  of  zeal  and  devotion,  and 
would  doubtless  have  preferred  rude 
frankness  to  amiable  complacency.  He 
would  rather  have  ventured  to  recall  Al- 
ceste  than  Philinte.  But  if  he  gave  freely 
of  himself  only  to  the  truly  "scious,"1  he 
showed  an  infinitely  affectionate,  atten- 
tive and  delicate  kindness  toward  those 
whom  he  counted  his  friends.  >  In  that 

1  See  p.  61. 

[16] 


LIFE     AND     PERSONALITY 

charming  residence  in  Irving  Street,  which 
he  himself  had  planned,  a  large  and 
simple  wooden  house  in  the  colonial 
style,  surrounded  by  lawn  and  trees, 
like  the  greater  number  of  the  dwelling 
places  in  Cambridge,  the  prevailing  at- 
mosphere of  the  James  family  was  one 
of  very  cordial  hospitality,  as  well  as 
of  intelligence,  wit,  frankness,  intimacy, 
outspokenness,  work,  zest,  and  earnest/? 

Such  were  the  conditions  in  his  own 
family  last  spring  (1910)  when  Professor 
James,  who  in  his  capacity  of  physician 
had  followed  the  course  of  his  malady, 
decided  as  a  last  resort  on  visiting  Paris 
to  consult  a  distinguished  specialist. 
Neither  then  nor  later,  during  the  period 
when  his  sufferings  were  redoubled  and 
the  future  grew  darker  from  day  to  day, 
did  his  original  humour,  his  spiritual  vi- 
vacity, his  interest  in  the  present,  his  in-  ^ 
exhaustible  courtesy,  ever  fail  him.  He 
doubtless  believed  that  the  mind  was 
stronger  than  the  agents  which  destroy 
the  organism.  And  he  believed  that,  to 
men  of  good  will,  death  itself  could  not  be 
[17] 


WILLIAM     JAMES 


otherwise  than  good./  The  most  excru- 
ciating suffering,  the  impatient  call  of 
death,  wrung  from  him  no  complaint, 
no  word  or  sign  of  discouragement.  7  To 
the  end  he  was  the  man  of  thought,  of 
faith  and  of  energy,  not  admitting  that 
our  brief  wisdom  sets  any  bounds  to 
possibility,  and  believing  that  it  depends 
upon  us  to  contribute,  by  our  personal 
effort,  here  below  and  perhaps  hereafter, 
to  the  conservation  and  development  of 
the  moral  and  spiritual  forces  of  the 
universe.  1 


[18] 


THE   PHILOSOPHY   OF 
WILLIAM   JAMES 


PSYCHOLOGY 

A  HE  point  of  departure  for  the  philo- 
sophic researches  of  William  James  is 
found  in  his  studies  in  anatomy  and  physi- 
ology. By  profession  as  well  as  by  doc- 
trine, he  prosecuted  these  studies  accord- 
ing to  a  strictly  experimental  method. 
It  was  precisely  this  disposition  to  take 
experience  as  his  only  guide  which 
induced  him  to  overleap  the  boundaries 
of  physiology  and  to  enter  the  domain 
of  psychologic  research,  in  which  he  was 
destined  to  distinguish  himself. 

As  a  physiologist  studying  the  actions 

of  living  beings,  he  readily  admits  that 

a  great  number   of   these   actions    may 

be  satisfactorily  explained  by  considering 

[19] 


WILLIAM     JAMES 


them  as  automatic  and  mechanical  ner- 
vous reactions,  responding  immediately 
to  external  excitations.  These  actions, 
in  fact,  are  sensibly  identical  for  like 
excitations.  But,  on  the  other  hand, 
certain  actions  are  met  with  in  living 
beings  which  differ  profoundly  from  those 
mentioned  above.  These,  like  the  former, 
tend  in  a  general  way  to  the  preservation 
of  individuality,  but  under  the  same 
excitation,  they  are  distinct  and  not  to 
be  foreseen.  A  frog  deprived  of  its 
higher  centres  reacts  like  a  machine. 
But  a  frog  which  -retains  these  centres 
reacts  in  a  spontaneous  way. 

Shall  we  admit  that  this  spontaneity 
is  only  apparent,  and  that  in  reality  the 
reflex  is  no  less  mechanical  in  the  sec- 
ond case  than  in  the  first?  Such  an 
interpretation  can  be  regarded  only  as 
arbitrary. 

Truth  to  tell,  we  do  not  accurately 
know  whether  the  slightest  reflex,  with 
its  property  of  aiming  at  the  preserva- 
tion of  life,  is  not  actually,  at  bottom, 
reducible  to  pure  mechanism.  And  when 
[20] 


PSYCHOLOGY 


the  explanation  which  satisfies  the  physi- 
ologist coincides  exactly  with  reality, 
why  should  not  all  the  reflexes,  without 
exception,  be  referred  back  to  these 
elementary  reflexes?  / 

But,  although  I  can  identify  the  higher 
reflexes  with  the  lower  only  by  question- 
able arguments  and  by  means  of  unjusti- 
fiable metaphysical  hypotheses,  I  find, 
in  experience  itself  a  fact  which  at  once 
furnishes  me  with  the  desired  explana- 
tion: it  is  the  idea,  the  phenomenon 
which,  notably  in  the  human  being,  is 
interpolated  between  the  excitation  and 
the  reaction.  If  I  want  to  remain  on 
experimental  ground,  I  must  make  place 
in  the  theory  of  reflexes  for  the  idea,  as 
well  as  for  the  nerves  which  suffice  to 
explain  these  lower  reflexes  sensibly,  vj 
must  explain,  scientifically,  the  actions 
of  animals,  as  the  case  demands,  now 
by  simple  organic  movements,  now  by 
the  intervention  of  an  idea,  i 

Can  this  observation  fail  to  open  a/ 
new    chapter    of    physiological    science? 
It   is   advisable  to  model  science  upon 
[21] 


WILLIAM     JAMES 


realities,  and  not  to  model  realities  upon 
this  or  that  condition  of  our  science 
posited  a  priori.  The  idea  which  in 
animals  and  in  particular  in  man  is 
strikingly  characterized  by  the  fact  that 
it  is  perceived  by  a  consciousness,  could 
not  be  known  at  all  if  we  were  dependent 
solely  upon  the  physiologist's  mode  of 
cognition.  The  experience  by  which  we 
grasp  it  differs,  not  superficially  but 
radically,  from  sense  experience,  which 
suffices  for  the  study  of  life  pure  and 
simple.  It  is,  properly  speaking,  psy- 
chological experience,  a  mode  of  cognition 
the  distinct  reality  of  which  has  been 
admirably  elucidated  by  Locke,  Berkeley, 
John  Stuart  Mill,  and  the  modern  psy- 
chologists. 

And  yet,  in  order  to  define  this  experi- 
ence more  scientifically,  would  it  not  be 
well,  after  acknowledging  its  existence,  to 
form  a  conception  of  it  as  far  as  possible 
by  analogy  with  physical  experience,  and 
to  suppose  that  its  purpose,  after  dis- 
closing certain  simple  elements  in  the 
soul,  is  to  examine  how  these  latter,  by 
[22] 


PSYCHOLOGY 


combination,  produce  complex  phenom- 
ena which  we  are  aware  of?  Such  a 
psychological  atomism  was  the  postulate  / 
of  the  so-called  associationist  doctrine, 
which  for  a  long  time  seemed  in  the 
ascendant//  But  in  recent  years,  notably 
in  Scotland  and  in  France,  grave  object- 
ions have  been  raised  against  the  analogy 
that  this  doctrine  establishes  between 
psychic  relations  and  mechanical  rela- 
tions. \Associationism  is  an  effort  to 
find,  in  the  domain  of  consciousness,  a 
type  of  relation  which  resembles  New- 
tonian attraction.7  But  are  we  not  in 
danger  of  letting  the  essential  feature 
of  the  psychic  fact  escape  us  if  we  impose 
on  it,  a  priori,  the  form  of  the  elementary 
facts  of  the  material  world? 

One  of  the  most  vigorous  and  success- 
ful adversaries  of  associationism  was 
William  James.  ;/  He  never  tired  of  show- 
ing that  the  atomistic  hypothesis,  which 
posits  impenetrable  elements  literally  ex- 
terior to  each  other  and  fundamentally 
immutable,  in  no  way  conforms  to  the 
nature,  essentially  shaded,  complex,  pene- 
[23] 


WILLIAM     JAMES 


trable,  fluid  and  individual,  of  the  exist- 
ences made  known  to  us  by  psychological 
experience.  7  That  is  to  say,  under  the 
name  of  states  of  consciousness,  associa- 
tionism  considers  imaginary  entities,  arti- 
ficially detached  from  psychic  reality, 
elaborated  according  to  a  type  which 
relates  to  another  order  of  phenomena, 
and  does  not  consider  the  life  of  the  soul 
itself  on  the  side  of  its  truly  specific  and 
original  quality.  7 

Supposing,  then,  that  associationism 
must  be  abandoned,  does  it  follow,  on 
the  other  hand,  that  we  must  return  to 
the  substance  of  the  spiritualist  school, 
as  the  principle  of  the  unity  which, 
basically,  enters  into  psychic  multi- 
plicity ?y 

This  solution,  too,  is  insufficient.  <JLike 
the  associationists'  atom  of  conscious- 
ness, the  substance  of  the  spiritual- 
ist school  is  nothing  more  than  a 
creature  of  the  reason,  unknown  to 
experience.  /'And  the  homogeneous  uni- 
versality which  characterizes  it,  renders 
it  unfit  to  explain  whatever  actually 
[24] 


PSYCHOLOGY 


is  fluid  and  capable  of  novelty  in  psy- 
chic experience.  "7 

The  conclusion  to  be  reached  is  that 
introspection  is  and  remains  the  fit  and 
necessary  method  for  psychology./  But 
in  order  for  this  process  to  be  really 
productive,  it  must  be  carried  out  in 
^ome  specific  way  which,  so  far,  has  not 
been  accurately  or  completely  defined. 
It  must  be  directed  in  such  a  way  as  to 
grasp  something  more  than  the  multiple 
without  unity,  the  object  of  the  physico- 
psychological  experience  of  the  associa- 
tionists,  or  the  one  without  the  multiple, 
the  object  of  the  alleged  intuition  of  the 
spiritualistic  metaphysicians.  The  true 
introspection  is  the  living  synthesis,  the 
intimate  fusion,  the  concrete  unity  of 
these  two  methods.  It  has  for  its  object 
the  actual,  the  immediate  datum  of 
consciousness.  ^But  this  datum  is  neither 
a  state  of  consciousness  in  juxtaposition 
to  other  states,  like  things  situated  in 
space,  nor  an  ego  one  and  identical, 
comparable  to  a  mathematical  unity; 
vit  consists  in  the  total  content,  at  once 
[25] 


WILLIAM     JAMES 


distinct  and  indistinct,  finite  and  infinite, 
one  and  multiple,  of  a  certain  individual 
consciousness,  taken  at  a  given  moment 
of  its  existence.  And  the  very  idea  of  an 
isolated  moment  is  itself  a  fiction :  for  con- 
sciousness is  a  current  in  perpetual  motion. 
The  stream  of  consciousness:  that  is  the 
least  inappropriate  mode  of  designating 
it. 

Such,  in  fine,  is  psychological  experi- 
ence; it  comes  to  coincide  with  conscious- 
ness itself,  y  It  is  not  a  pincushion  to  stick 
events  into,  nor  is  it  a  numerical  collection 
of  elements,  in  regard  to  which  unity 
and  individuality  would  be  only  epi- 
phenomena;  it  is  a  multiple  unity  and 
a  single  multiplicity,  an  entity  essentially 
individual  and  alive./  And  4o  consider 
its  manifestations  irrespective  of  its  life 
and  its  individuality  is  to  consider  some- 
thing other  than  the  thing  in  question,  y 
This  unity  is  not  made  from  multiplicity, 
for  we  cannot  obtain  it  by  means  of 
synthesis.  The  multiple  may  result  from 
it,  but  can  neither  precede  nor  produce 
it.  Such  is,  in  some  sort,  the  case  of 
[26] 


PSYCHOLOGY 


thought  in  relation  to  words:  we  can 
translate  thought  into  words ;  we  cannot, 
with  words,  make  a  thought. 

Psychological  experience,  thus  deter- 
mined, being  as  real  as  physical  expe- 
rience, the  psychology  which  shall  be 
built  up  by  this  means  will  be  entitled 
to  the  name  of  natural  science,  the  same 
title  as  that  given  to  the  sciences  of  life 
which  deal  with  physical  experience.> 

What  use,  however,  will  psychology 
make  of  the  method  suited  to  its  ends? 
Will  it  confine  itself  to  describing  the 
phenomena  discerned  by  introspection, 
without  attempting  in  any  way  to  ex- 
plain them? 

To  stop  at  the  mere  description  of  phe- 
nomena is  not  to  do  scientific  work;  and 
to  restore  the  entities  of  the  spiritualistic 
metaphysicians  would  be  much  better 
than  to  cut  oneself  off  from  all  investiga- 
tion of  the  laws  and  causes  of  phenomena. 
But  just  as  it  is  impossible  to  consider 
physical  experience  as  the  only  experi- 
ence which  science  can  vouch  for,  it 
[27] 


WILLIAM     JAMES 


would  be  no  less  artificial  to  isolate 
psychic  experience  from  physical  experi- 
ence. The  concrete  and  real  experience 
which  our  datum  as  such  represents 
shows  us  states  of  consciousness  condi- 
tioned, and  that  directly,  by  certain  ac- 
tivities of  the  cerebral  hemispheres/?  This 
testimony  cannot  be  invalidated  by  the 
data  peculiar  to  consciousness./  Up  to  a 
certain  point,  then,  psychology  might 
apply  itself  to  the  task  of  giving  a  true 
explanation  of  the  phenomena  starting 
from  the  supposition  of  a  constant  cor- 
relation between  cerebral  states  and  psy- 
chic states.  'Whenever  this  expedient 
proves  convenient,  nothing  will  prevent 
it  from  calling  to  its  aid  associationism, 
which  has  been  constructed  in  just  such 
a  way  as  to  establish  a  symmetrical 
relation  between  the  psychic  and  the 
physical.  > 

But  it  is  important  to  observe  that  if, 
in  James's  case,  psychology  at  many 
points  resumes  a  method  which  at  first 
it  seemed  to  proscribe,  it  does  so  by 
modifying  its  meaning  in  conformity 
[28] 


PSYCHOLOGY 


with  its  own  principles. 7  In  the  psy- 
chology of  concrete  and  total  conscious- 
ness, psycho-physical  parallelism  is  no 
longer  a  principle  but  an  hypothesis,  an 
artifice;  7it  is  a  partial  and  fictitious 
representation  of  the  nature  of  things, 
in  a  word,  a  language  the  value  of  which 
we  shall  test  in  trying  to  make  use  of  it 
as  a  method  of  explanation.  The  human 
mind  can  neither  think  nor  even  perceive, 
save  by  means  of  presumptions  and 
hypotheses:  its  affirmations  signify  that 
the  instruments  it  has  forged,  the  bodies 
it  has  constructed,  have  served  it  many 
times  before  in  its  dealings  with  reality. 
Furthermore,  in  a  vital  and  direct 
psychology  like  that  of  James,  the  postu- 
late of  parallelism  takes  on  a  new  signifi-x 
cance.  For  experience  shows  us  not 
only  the  action  of  the  physical  upon  the 
moral,  but  also,  no  less  clearly,  the  action 
of  the  moral  upon  the  physical.  Thus 
it  may  very  well  happen  that  the  cerebral 
state,  on  which  a  psychic  state  depends, 
is  not  itself  purely  physical  in  its  origin. 
Our  separation  of  the  mechanical  from 
[29] 


WILLIAM     JAMES 


the  conscious  does  not  exist  in  nature. 
Consider,  on  the  one  hand,  a  certain 
psychic  reflex,  obviously  spontaneous; 
and,  on  the  other  hand,  an  elementary 
reflex  which  seems  to  be  a  purely  mechani- 
cal phenomenon.  Nature  offers  us  im- 
perceptible transitions  from  one  to  the 
other.  .And  in  substance,  the  most 
reasonabte  hypothesis  is  that  originally 
all  the  nervous  centres  without  exception 
responded  to  excitations  in  a  sponta- 
neous and  intelligent  way,  but  that,  as 
the  result  of  a  certain  evolution,  the 
nervous  centres  showed  differentiation, 
some  exhibiting  higher,  some  lower  de- 
velopment than  is  to  be  found  in  the 
primitive  being.  * 

Once,  then,  in  possession  of  the  principle, 
the  point  of  view  and  the  method  adapted 
to  the  purpose,  psychology  may  unhesi- 
tatingly call  upon  the  assumptions  and 
the  postulates  of  the  biological  and 
physical  sciences,  since  in  the  world  of 
reality  there  no  longer  remain  any  sharp 
distinctions  between  things,  and  the  psy- 
chical, in  fact,  merges  into  the  physical. 
[30] 


PSYCHOLOGY 


The  principles  of  the  physical  sciences 
will  undergo  complete  transformation / 
through  contact  with  psychology.  Their 
materialism  will  fade  away,  their  mech- 
anism will  quicken,  their  determinism  will 
grow  pliant,  y- 

*  *  *       . 

Having  thus  defined  the  conditions  for 
the  transition  from  physiology  to  psy- 
chology, William  James  for  a  long  time 
devoted  all  his  attention  to  the  latter 
science.  V  He  dealt  with  it  for  its  own 
sake,  adopting  the  method  and  the  point 
of  view  which  exactly  suited  him.  In 
every  investigation  he  forced  himself 
not  to  consider  things  merely  from  the 
outside  or  from  a  biased  standpoint, 
not  to  confine  himself  to  interpretation 
by  means  of  concepts  formed  to  grasp 
and  classify  other  objects,  but  to  take 
his  stand  at  the  centre  of  the  realities  / 
that  he  wished  to  understand,  to  look 
phenomena  full  in  the  face,  and  to  study 
them  as  directly  and  at  as  close  quarters 
[31] 


WILLIAM     JAMES 


as  he  possibly  could.  The  work  that  he 
has  accomplished  in  this  domain  is  so 
considerable  and  original,  so  constantly 
in  contact  with  living  reality,  that  it 
•v  will  very  certainly  last  through  the  ages, 
as  one  of  the  decisive  events  in  the 
historical  development  of  science.  It  is 
the  restoration,  after  the  reign  of  asso- 
ciationism,  of  introspective  psychology 
upon  new  foundations. 

According  to  James,  the  subject  of 
psychology  is  the  life  of  personal  con- 
sciousness. This  life  has  two  character- 
istics :  in  the  first  place,  it  is  a  teleological 
activity,  a  choice  of  means  in  view  of  the 
realization  of  an  end;  furthermore  and 
in  the  second  place,  its  aim  is,  properly 
speaking,  the  preservation  of  those  parts 
of  its  content  in  which  it  takes  an  interest, 
and  the  elimination  of  all  others.  7 

Such  is  the  dual  fundamental  fact.  To 
place  this  fact  in  its  physical  environment, 
that  is  to  say,  first  of  all,  in  the  brain, 
to  describe  all  its  phases  and  all  its  forms, 
and  to  connect  them  with  their  physio- 
logical conditions:  this  is  the  immense 

[32] 


PSYCHOLOGY 


task  undertaken  in  the  Principles  of 
Psychology  (1890),  for  a  good  part  of  its 
extent,  and  in  the  Briefer  Course  (1892). 
\These  are  rigorously  scientific  works,  in 
form  as  well  as  in  substance,  in  a  very 
real  way  envisaging  psychology  as  a 
natural  science,  and  at  the  same  time 
very  easy-going  in  traversing  the  precise 
and  subtle  subjects  involved,  very  lively, 
very  elegant,  very  captivating,  agreeable 
and  invigorating  reading  for  a  man  of 
the  world,  no  less  than  an  indispensable 
working  instrument  for  the  specialist^ 
Read,  in  the  Briefer  Course,  the  chapter 
on  Habit,  or  the  end  of  the  chapter  on 
Will,  and  you  will  have  to  confess  with 
delighted  surprise  that,  just  as  the  philoso- 
pher always  considers  his  material  in  the  / 
totality  of  its  content,  so  the  man,  even 
in  the  most  technical  treatise,  unfailingly 
puts  all  of  himself  into  his  task,  —  his 
imagination,  and  his  heart,  as  well  as  his 
intelligence  and  his  knowledge. 

Among  the  numerous  original  features 
of  the  works  of  William  James,  one  of 
the  most  celebrated  is  the  theory  of  emo-  ^ 
[33] 


WILLIAM     JAMES 


tion,  considered  as  the  effect,  and  not 
the  cause,  of  its  organic  expression.1 
According  to  the  actual  order  of  things, 
James  points  out,  we  must  not  say  that 
we  weep  because  we  feel  sad,  but  we 
must  say  that  we  are  sad  because  we 
weep.  Emotion  does  not  result  from 
efferent  nerve  currents,  but  solely  from 
afferent  currents.  ^  It  is  nothing  but  the 
feeling  induced  in  us  by  reactions,  motor, 
visceral,  and  circulatory,  consequent  upon 
the  perception  of  the  object.  /  The  in- 
duced state  of  consciousness  does  not 
immediately  follow  the  representative 
state  of  consciousness;  certain  corporeal 
modifications  intervene,  and  it  is  the 
feeling  of  these  modifications  which  con- 
stitutes emotion.  ;  The  principal  proof 
given  by  James  is  that  we  cannot  imagine 

1  This  theory  is  known  as  the  James-Lange  theory. 
In  reality  James  began  to  publish  his  views  on  this 
question  in  Mind,  in  1884;  the  Danish  physiologist 
Lange,  unaware  of  James's  work,  set  forth  the  same 
doctrine,  in  1885,  in  a  book  entitled:  Ueber  die  Gemiits- 
bewegungen. — In  the  Annales  de  la  SocitiS  linnienne 
de  Lyon,  t.  LVIII,  1911,  M.  Nayrac  shows  that  about 
1830  two  French  doctors,  Ph.  Dufour  and  P.  Blaud, 
had  outlined  a  similar  theory. 

[34] 


PSYCHOLOGY 


what  would  remain  of  emotion  if  we 
eliminated  the  totality  of  concomitant 
organic  reactions. 

It  is  clear  that  James  constructs  and 
defends  his  theory  without  for  a  moment 
inquiring  whether  it  proves  or  invalidates 
the  truth  of  materialism.  He  seeks  an 
explanation  which  agrees  with  experience, 
and  he  seeks  nothing  else.  It  is  the 
province  of  modern  science,  by  means  of 
proximate  causes,  to  discover  explanations 
which  are  both  instructive  and  useful 
without  having  to  touch  upon  questions 
which  involve  general  principles. 

It  by  no  means  follows,  however,  that 
William  James,  as  a  philosopher,  is  in- 
different to  the  metaphysical  question 
evoked  by  his  theory.  >  On  the  contrary, 
in  his  subsequent  reflections  upon  the 
explanation  of  emotion  by  afferent  cur- 
rents, he  raises  the  question  whether 
this  view  can  properly  be  taxed  with 
materialism.  In  the  first  place,  it  is  not 
every  species  of  emotion,  but  crude  and 
violent  emotions,  which  are  here  con- 
sidered. Possibly  certain  delicate  emo- 
[35] 


WILLIAM     JAMES 


tions,  such  as  the  esthetic  and  moral 
emotions,  are  caused  in  some  other  way. 
The  value  of  an  emotion,  then,  resides 
in  its  own  nature,  and  not  in  its  mode  of 
production.  If  some  emotion  is,  in  itself, 
a  profound  fact,  pure,  noble  and  spiritual, 
it  remains  so  whether  or  not  it  consists 
in  the  feeling  of  certain  visceral  modi- 
fications. To  explain  the  appearance  of 
a  phenomenon  is  not  to  suppress  it. 

But  that  is  not  all.  The  physiological 
theory  of  emotion  springs  from  certain 
somatic  phenomena,  and  does  not  need 
to  inquire  whether  these  phenomena,  in 
their  turn,  have  a  purely  bodily  cause. 
It  is  enough  to  affirm  that,  where  they 
are  present,  emotion  appears.  But  all 
psychological  phenomena  cannot  be  ex- 
plained in  this  way  without  raising  the 
question  of  the  origin,  mechanical  or 
extra-mechanical,  of  their  somatic  con- 
ditions. The  phenomenon  of  attention, 
for  example,  if  one  fathoms  it,  leads  the 
psychologist  to  consider  it  possible  for 
psychical  action,  as  such,  to  add  some- 
thing new  to  the  forces  actually  present 
[36] 


PSYCHOLOGY 


in  the  individual.  It  may  indeed  happen, 
in  certain  cases,  that  consciousness  itself 
contributes  to  produce  and  determine  the 
psychological  substratum  which  condi- 
tions its  operations 


Psychology  overlaps  physiology.  The 
subject-matter  of  the  latter  which,  to 
the  physiologist,  seems  a  complete  and 
absolute  whole,  is  nothing  more  than  a 
part,  and  not  an  isolable  part,  in  the  eyes 
of  the  psychologist,  who  sees  it  take 
form,  by  a  contingent  differentiation 
and  fixation,  from  a  vaster  and  more 
mobile  reality  furnished  by  conscious- 
ness., Does  that  mean  that  psychology 
attains  ultimate  and  absolutely  true 
reality,  where  things  reveal  themselves 
exactly  as  they  are? 

If  physiology  has  its  postulates,  which 
rest  upon  psychological  foundations,  psy- 
chology in  its  turn  cannot  boast  that  it 
admits  only  that  which  it  proves  and  com- 
prehends by  means  of  its  own  data.  In 
[37] 


WILLIAM     JAMES 


a  word,  psychology  is  in  a  situation  anal- 
ogous to  that  of  the  other  sciences.  It 
is  created  by  the  aid  of  elements  of  which 
it  has  from  the  outset  adequate  knowl- 
edge, being  given  the  tasks  which  these 
elements  impose  upon  it.  In  this  sense, 
its  postulates  have  all  the  necessary 
clearness  and  certainty.  Thus  an  as- 
tronomer may  advance  up  to  a  certain 
point  in  the  explanation  of  the  celestial 
phenomena  by  admitting  that  the  sun 
revolves  around  the  earth.  But,  in  pro- 
portion as  the  field  of  his  researches  is 
enlarged,  it  becomes  clear  that  such  an 
accepted  axiom  was  after  all  only  a 
postulate,  and  that  even  the  meaning  of 
this  postulate  must  be  modified,  if  we 
wish  it  to  apply  to  a  profounder  and 
vaster  reality. 

In  the  last  analysis,  the  data  of  psy- 
chology are  these  two :  first,  the  effective 
existence  of  thoughts  and  of  feelings, 
according  to  the  terms  we  employ  to 
designate  our  transitory  states  of  con- 
sciousness; second,  the  knowledge,  by 
means  of  these  states  of  consciousness,  of 
[38] 


PSYCHOLOGY 


certain  realities  other  than  these  states 
themselves. 

There  can  be  no  doubt  that  the  psy- 
chologist may  cultivate  a  considerable 
portion  of  his  field  without  questioning 
these  postulates,  merely  contenting  him- 
self with  the  possession  of  a  reasonably 
clear  if  not  a  distinct  definition;  but  on 
the  other  hand  the  investigator,  deter- 
mined to  follow  reality  wherever  it  may 
lead,  may  one  day  find  himself  facing 
such  questions  as  these:  the  relation  of 
consciousness  to  the  brain,  the  relation 
of  mental  states  to  their  objects,  the 
mobile  character  of  consciousness,  the 
relation  of  states  of  consciousness  to  an 
understanding  subjectp7  Not  only  can 
he  not  resolve  these  problems  by  the 
aid  of  the  only  resources  which  physio- 
logical and  psychological  data,  so  de- 
fined, furnish  him,  but  the  very  solutions 
which  he  has  obtained  with  reference 
to  the  more  directly  accessible  matters 
now  appear  to  him  only  abstract  and 
relative. 

Thus  we  see  that  the  condition  of 
[39] 


WILLIAM     JAMES 


v: 


psychology  is  analogous  to  that  of  physi- 
ology. If  the  latter  carries  its  researches 
far  enough,  it  sees  rising  before  it  some 
day  enigmas  which  are  beyond  its  powers 
of  solution./  In  like  manner,  psychology 
undoubtedly  offers  a  wide  field  as  a  purely 
natural  science,  x  But  in  the  course  of 
its  progress  an  hour  strikes  when,  if  it 
wishes  to  explain  facts  in  respect  to  their 
most  distinctive  quality,  it  finds  itself 
compelled  to  enlarge  its  boundaries  and 
to  touch  upon  higher  questions  —  the 
questions  called  metaphysical./  It  re- 
quires  courage  to  say  it:  the  Galileo  or 
the  Lavoisier  of  psychology,  the  man 
who  shall  unveil  the  truly  fundamental 
principle,  if  he  is  ever  to  appear,  will  be 
a  metaphysician. 

Can  experience,  the  sole  source  of  our 
knowledge,  suffice  to  meet  the  crisis  of 
such  an  evolution? 


[40] 


n 

RELIGIOUS   PSYCHOLOGY 

HE  scholar  who  has  dealt  with  no 
form  of  experience  but  the  physical,  readily 
imagines  that  this  is  the  only  possible  form. 
But  the  psychologist  who,  not  burdening 
himself  a  priori  with  researches  upon 
the  conditions  of  knowledge,  settles  by 
fact,  as  did  Diogenes,  the  problem  of 
possibility,  and  from  the  outset  deals 
with  psychological  experience,  perceives, 
when  he  comes  to  reflect  later  upon  this 
experience,  that  by  very  reason  of  its 
distinctive  and  original  quality  it  is  no 
less  real  than  physical  experience,  is 
naturally  allied  to  it,  and  moreover  is 
not  reducible  to  it.  There  are  then  two 
sorts  of  experience:  why  might  there  not 
be  three?  Does  the  second,  added  to  the 
first,  exhaust  the  content  of  reality? 
Amid  the  infinite  variety  of  phases 
[41] 


WILLIAM     JAMES 


which  human  consciousness  can  offer, 
there  is  one  which  appears  peculiarly 
paradoxical:  the  one  called  alteration 
of  personality.  /  How  can  consciousness, 
the  distinctive  traits  of  which  are  unity 
and  continuity,  undergo  transformation 
or  subdivision  into  several  more  or  less 
heterogeneous  egos,  simultaneous,  suc- 
cessive, or  alternative?  Phrase  it  as  we 
may,  to  profess  to  confine  ourselves  to 
the  clear  and  convenient  doctrine  of  a 
personal  consciousness  always  identical 
with  itself,  circumscribed  and  closed, 
would  be  to  condemn  ourselves  to  consider 
the  alterations  of  personality  as  purely 
illusory  appearances.  The  evidence  of 
definitions  pales  before  the  evidence  of 
facts  on  this  point;  and  psychology  has 
resigned  itself  to  the  admission  that 
beyond  the  ego  acutely  conscious  of  itself, 
lies  a  more  or  less  considerable  mass  of 
psychic  elements  susceptible  of  gravitat- 
ing around  the  ego,  or  perhaps  of  organiz- 
ing themselves  on  their  own  account  into 
consciousnesses  more  or  less  distinct 
from  the  primary  consciousness.  > 
[42] 


RELIGIOUS     PSYCHOLOGY 

Now,  so  long  as  we  are  dealing  with 
certain  pathological  phenomena,  in  which 
the  personality  primarily  appears  to  be 
weakened  or  mutilated,  the  hypothesis  of 
a  simple  disintegration  of  consciousness 
may  seem  to  suffice;  and  those  psychol- 
ogists wedded  to  the  principle  of  the 
clear  consciousness  do  not  despair  of 
deriving,  from  the  latter,  the  total  content 
of  the  obscure  and  marginal  conscious- 
ness. Truth  to  tell,  we  may  question 
whether  those  who  profess  to  support 
this  claim  are  not  sometimes  deceived 
as  to  the  value  of  their  explanations,  just 
as  in  the  case  of  the  physiologist  who 
hopes  to  reduce  the  inferior  reflexes 
entirely  to  mechanism.  But  it  becomes 
wholly  impossible,  apparently,  to  be 
satisfied  with  an  explanation  drawn  from 
normal  psychology,  an  analysis  of  per- 
sonal consciousness,  when  we  are  dealing 
with  certain  alterations  of  personality, 
in  which  the  latter  exhibits  itself,  not 
merely  modified,  but  immeasurably  mag- 
nified  and  transfigured,  as  in  the  evo- 
lution of  religious  souls.  And  if  we 
[43] 


WILLIAM     JAMES 


wish  to  test  the  explanation  of  these 
phenomena  by  the  only  principles  with 
which  normal  psychology  deals,  we  are 
compelled  either  to  deny  the  facts,  or  else 
to  mutilate  or  distort  them. 

Now,  just  as  the  psychologist,  suffo- 
cating in  the  prison  in  which  physiology 
confined  him,  has  opened  up  an  immense 
field  of  study  by  deliberately  positing 
the  existence  of  a  specifically  psycholog- 
ical experience,  so  it  may  be  that,  in 
taking  up  his  position  at  the  centre  of 
the  religious  life,  in  place  of  looking  at  it 
from  without  like  the  anatomist  dissecting 
a  corpse,  he  may  recognize  the  distinct 
existence  of  a  third  sort  of  experience,  the 
truly  religious  experience.  7 

It  is  important  to  consider  that  such 
a  psychic  phenomenon,  which  we  are 
unable  to  construct  with  the  discrete 
multitude  of  elements  that  condition  it, 
may  readily  be  explained  if  we  admit 
the  reality  of  that  special  form  of  existence 
^we  call  consciousness  —  like  the  case  of 
the  simple  physical  phenomenon  of  mo- 
tion, which  we  are  forced  to  deny  if  we 
[44] 


RELIGIOUS     PSYCHOLOGY 

admit  only  arithmetic  discontinuity,  but) 
which  becomes  at  once  possible  and  real 
if  we  posit  as  valid  the  experimental 
intuition  of  the  continuum.)'  Given  these 
examples,  it  would  be  anti-philosophic, 
in  the  face  of  certain  phenomena  that 
the  principles  of  our  established  sciences 
do  not  suffice  to  explain,  to  refuse  to 
seek  new  paths,  and  to  hazard  new 
hypotheses. 

The  alterations  of  personality  that  the 
religious  life  offers  us  were  in  their  turn 
studied  directly  by  William  James  from 
the  point  of  view  of  the  religious  soul 
itself .>  This  study  is  found  in  his  cele- 
brated work:  The  Varieties  of  Religious 
Experience,  A  Study  in  Human  Nature, 
published  in  1902. 

Pathology,  which  often  throws  light 
on  the  study  of  the  normal  being  by 
isolating  and  exaggerating  some  of  its 
functions,  has  thrown  into  still  clearer 
view  a  strange  faculty  of  human  con- 
sciousness :  the  faculty,  peculiar  to  certain 
subjects,  of  entering  into  communica- 
tion with  other  consciousnesses,  which 
[45] 


WILLIAM     JAMES 


more  or  less  mingle  with,  and  sometimes 
even  replace,  the  original  consciousness. 
In  these  phenomena,  the  consciousness 
no  longer  perceives  exterior  objects,  as 
it  does  in  physical  experience;  it  is  no 
longer  enclosed  within  the  limits  of  a 
given  ego,  as  happens  in  psychological 
experience  pure  and  simple:  it  enters 
into  other  egos  and  yields  itself  to  their 
influence. 

This  faculty,  which  apparently  illness 
does  not  cause  but  merely  develops  and 
determines  so  as  to  make  it  evident,  is, 
according  to  James,  the  psychic  basis 
of  the  religious  life.  >  Not  that  religion 
is  in  itself  morbid.  Shall  we  say  that 
attention  is  a  morbid  phenomenon  be- 
cause certain  nervous  maladies  over-excite 
it,  and  bring  into  prominence  certain 
of  its  properties?  The  earth  is  not  the 
plant.  Its  products  depend  upon  the 
seeds  which  it  receives.  But  it  is  clear 
that,  if  religion  is  to  become  a  phase  of 
human  life,  man  must  be  capable  of  it. 
According  to  James,  the  property  of  the 
human  soul  which  fits  it  for  receiving 
[46] 


RELIGIOUS     PSYCHOLOGY 

religious  impression  is  that  very  one 
which  is  brought  into  prominence,  through 
its  exaggeration,  by  the  pathological 
facts  of  alteration  of  personality,  that  is, 
the  possible  abolition  of  the  impenetra-' 
bility  which,  in  the  ordinary  life,  charac- 
terizes the  consciousness  of  the  individual*/ 
Religion,  viewed  no  longer  merely  in 
its  psychological  aspect  but  in  its  indi- 
vidual reality,  is  essentially  a  certain 
life-form  of  the  individual  consciousness 
in  which  the  ego  feels  itself  modified  to 
its  very  depths  .>  It  is  an  experience  in 
the  sense  of  the  verb  "to  experience," 
which  means  not  to  verify  in  a  dry  way 
a  thing  which  takes  place  outside  of  us, 
but  to  try,  feel,  live  in  one's  own  person 
this  or  that  mode  of  existence:  a  sense 
of  the  word  exactly  corresponding  to  that 
of  the  German  erleben.  It  is  an  experi- 
ence which  varies  essentially  with  the 
individual,  and  in  which  the  individual 
element  cannot  be  suppressed  without 
causing  the  religious  character  to  dis- 
appear at  the  same  time.  If  the  syn- 
thetic action  of  an  ego,  present  as  a 
[47] 


WILLIAM     JAMES 


whole  in  each  one  of  its  manifestations, 
characterizes  the  psychological  conscious- 
ness, the  radical  modification  of  a  given 
personality  is  the  essence  of  the  religious 
phenomenon.  In  consequence,^here  does 
not  exist  a  religious  experience  as  such, 
capable  of  appearing  identical  in  the  case 
of  all  men,  as  with  scientific  experience.^ 
That  which  alone  effectively  counts  for 
a  philosophy  starting  from  realities  and 
not  from  abstract  concepts,  is  the  indi- 
vidual varieties  of  religious  experience, 
that  is  to  say,  of  the  religious  life./- 

Among  the  themes  suited  to  this 
experience  may  be  noted:  the  essential 
\j  and  unquenchable  joy  of  the  soul;  the 
cure  of  moral  and  physical  maladies 
effected  by  abandoning  oneself  to  the 
all-powerful  divine  goodness;  the  feeling 
of  sin  and  of  moral  suffering,  as  deter- 
mined by  certain  causes  of  which  in  spite 
of  all  our  efforts  we  have  learned  nothing; 
the  soul  divided  against  itself,  feeling 
within  it  the  struggle  of  conflicting  per- 
sonalities which  it  cannot  reconcile;  con- 
version which,  either  sudden  or  gradual, 
[48] 


RELIGIOUS     PSYCHOLOGY 

substitutes  for  a  given  personality  a 
totally  different  and  incomparably  su- 
perior personality;  sanctity  which  brings 
out  in  man  a  superhuman  and  enduring 
perfection;^  the  mystic  spiritual  life  in 
which  man,  while  remaining  himself,  is 
conscious  of  living  the  same  life  as  God; 
prayer  which  through  superhuman  means 
modifies  the  current  of  our  feelings  and 
of  events./* 

Among  these  varied  phenomena,  the 
individual  is  aware  of  entering  into  rela- 
tion with  certain  powers,  as  conscious 
and  personal  as  itself,  but  immeasurably 
superior  in  nature.  -  He  testifies  that, 
while  he  experiences  religious  emotion, 
his  life  is  transformed,  magnified,  en- 
nobled, animated  with  an  enthusiasm,  a 
capacity  for  heroism,  and  a  confidence  in 
success,  —  feelings  of  which  he  was,  of 
himself,  incapable.  And  he  is  naturally 
led  to  consider  as  a  true  consciousness 
and  personality  akin  to  his  own,  that 
being  who  thus  understands  him,  realizes 
him,  succors  him,  heals  him,  and  creates 
within  him  a  new  personality.  > 
[49] 


WILLIAM     JAMES 


Such  is  the  religious  consciousness; 
it  is  the  human  consciousness  endowed 
I  with  the  conviction  that  it  is  communi- 
cating with  God. 

At  the  same  time  it  communicates 
with  other  consciousnesses.  Incapable 
among  themselves  of  comprehending,  of 
understanding,  of  truly  communing  with 
each  other,  so  long  as  they  believe  only 
in  themselves,  men  once  turned  to  God 
may,  in  Him,  love  and  commune  with 
one  another.  To  those  whom  the  divine 
grace  has  not  touched,  the  universe  offers 
only  strangers,  outside  the  inner  circle 
of  friendship^  To  the  religious  soul, 
1  every  creature  is  a  friend  who,  as  God 
does,  enters  within  that  inner  circle. 
For  religion  brings  us  in  touch  with  the 
depths  of  souls,  makes  us  familiar  with 
them;  and,  at  bottom,  all  human  beings 
desire  God,  goodness  and  love.  > 

If,  then,  psychological  experience  al- 
ready has  a  range  of  perception  far 
vaster  than  that  of  physical  experience, 
religious  experience  in  its  turn  transcends 
^psychological  experience.  The  former 
[50]  / 


RELIGIOUS     PSYCHOLOGY 

merely  embraces  the  total  content  of  a 
finite  ego,  of  a  personality  thrown  back 
upon  itself;  religious  experience  sees  this 
personality  develop  and  grow  in  grace, 
thanks  to  the  relation  of  identification 
and  communion  existing  between  it  and 
higher  personalities. 

Irreducible  to  psychological  experience, 
is  religious  experience  properly  separable 
from  it?  Is  one  superposed  upon  the 
other  from  without,  like  one  storey  upon 
another;  or  are  these  two  experiences 
encased,  the  one  within  the  other,  like 
the  tubes  of  a  telescope? 

There  is,  it  would  seem,  some  relation 
between  religious  experience  and  psycho-/ 1 
logical  experience,  like  the  relation  of  the 
latter  to  physical  experience;  the  two 
experiences  partly  overlap.  Just  as  reflex 
action  is,  at  bottom,  a  phenomenon  at 
once  physiological  and  psychical,  in  the 
same  way  consciousness,  which  appears 
to  itself  like  a  closed  sphere,  in  reality 
possesses  a  medial  region  between  the 
individual  ego  and  the  other  egos. 
[51] 


WILLIAM     JAMES 


For  a  long  time  scholars  have  recog- 
nized the  existence  of  a  margin,  around 
some  centre  or  focus  of  consciousness  — 
a  margin  the  bounds  of  which  cannot  be 
measured,  and  in  which  float  elements 
of  lesser  and  lesser  consciousness,  sus- 
ceptible of  being  projected,  under  the 
action  of  attention,  into  the  full  light 
of  the  focal  consciousness.  But  to-day 
our  knowledge  of  the  ego  does  not  stop 
there.  One  must  regard  as  fundamental 
the  discovery,  definitely  established  in 
1886,  of  a  field  of  consciousness  actually 
lying  beyond  this  margin  of  the  personal 
consciousness.  The  learned  and  pro- 
found psychologist  Myers  has  described 
as  "subliminal"  this  consciousness  be- 
yond consciousness,  which  connects  itself 
up  with  the  central  ego  through  the  in- 
termediary of  the  marginal  region./  The 
existence  of  this  subliminal  ego  is  attested 
by  the  number  of  ideas  which  the  cen- 
tral ego  encounters  in  its  field  of  observa- 
tion, and  which  it  cannot,  in  any  way, 
connect  with  its  personal  experience. 
Such  are  the  intuitions  of  genius;  such 
[52] 


RELIGIOUS     PSYCHOLOGY 

the  metaphysical  postulates  of  our  physi- 
cal or  psychological  experience;  such, 
for  example,  the  notion  of  a  true  reality, 
answering  to  our  subjective  soul-states, 
the  notion  of  a  correspondence  between  ' 
our  ideas  and  things,  enabling  us  to 
elevate  OUT  ideas  to  the  status  of 
knowledge. 

But  \this  subliminal  ego  is  well  adapted 
to  explain  the  characteristics  of  the 
religious  consciousness.  In  it  is  effaced, 
shall  we  say,  reduced  little  by  little  to 
vanishing  undulations,  the  circle  origi- 
nally fixed  which  the  individual  draws 
about  itself,  and  within  which  it  claims 
to  be  self-sufficing  and  isolated  from  the 
universe.  ^  And  in  this  open  and  hos- 
pitable region,  diverse  consciousnesses 
may  enter  into  each  other,  lower  con- 
sciousnesses may  unite  themselves  with 
higher,  even  to  the  divine  consciousness 
itself.  >- 

Let  us  consider,  then,  a  certain  religious 

phenomenon,   the   reality   of   which   all 

might  be  tempted  to  deny,  because  we 

judge  it  not  as  superior,  but  as  contrary, 

[53] 


WILLIAM     JAMES 


to  the  nature  of  the  human  ego  —  the 
phenomenon  of  conversion.  For  one  who 
admits  the  existence  of  the  subliminal 
ego,  this  phenomenon,  without  ceasing 
to  be  supernatural,  becomes  compatible 
with  the  natural  conditions  of  our  psychic 
existence.  >  Religious  conversion  is,  in 
this  sense,  perhaps  a  sudden  irruption, 
perhaps  a  slow  infiltration,  through  the 
central  part  of  the  consciousness,  of  a 
mass  of  impressions  which  are  born  in 
the  subliminal  region  and  which,  through 
their  intensity  or  through  the  confident 
surrender  of  the  ego,  succeed  in  breaking 
down  the  barriers  within  which  the  latter 
was  confined.  7  Hence  a  displacement  of 
the  soul-focus,  a  change  of  orientation 
of  the  will  and  feeling.> 

There  is,  moreover,  according  to  this 
doctrine,  a  continual  transition  of  truly 
psychological  experience  to  religious  ex- 
perience, as  of  physical  experience  to 
psychological  experience.  >  And  psycho- 
logical experience  is  embodied  in  religious 
experience,  as  is  physical  experience  in 
psychological  experience,  y 
[54] 


RELIGIOUS     PSYCHOLOGY 

Having  thus  come,  in  following  the 
progress  of  a  definite  mode  of  experience, 
to  the  discovery  of  a  deeper  experience, 
we  perceive  it  for  the  first  time  in  a  new 
light.;  The  physiological  becomes,  for 
the  psychologist,  a  part,  artificially  sepa- 
rated  and  congealed,  of  the  infinitely 
complex  and  mobile  current  of  conscious- 
ness. Similarly  the  psychic,  pure  and 
simple,  the  experience  at  the  heart  of 
an  impenetrable  consciousness,  becomes, 
for  one  who  places  himself  in  the  centre 
of  the  religious  consciousness,  the  acci- 
dental and  superficial  manifestation  of 
an  ego  which,  according  to  its  true 
essence,  is  capable  of  entering  into  the 
vast  and  sympathetic  communion  of 
personalities.  Under  the  appearance  of 
the  fixed  laws  and  of  the  rigid  determina- 
tion of  matter,  there  is  the  flux  of 
consciousness;  beneath  the  conscious- 
nesses, distinct  from  each  other,  of  indi- 
viduals, there  is  the  mutual  interpenetra- 
tion  of  consciousnesses,  coexisting  with 
their  individuality  in  the  sphere  of  the 
spiritual  and  the  divine. 
[55] 


m 

PRAGMATISM 


I 


T  would  seem  that  in  committing  our- 
selves to  this  third  kind  of  experience, 
to  this  contact  with  the  deep  reality 
which  religion  secures  us,  it  ought  to  be 
possible  for  us  to  grasp  the  metaphysical 
problems,  whatever  they  are,  involved 
in  the  postulates  of  the  physical  sciences, 
and  in  those  of  psychology  as  a  natural 
science.  But  is  it  permissible  to  engage 
at  the  outset  in  such  a  research? 

The  philosophy  of  James  is  distin- 
guished from  the  greater  number  of 
modern  philosophical  systems  by  this 
very  remarkable  trait:  in  contradistinc- 
tion to  the  injunction  of  Kant,  it  refuses 
to  begin  with  the  criticism  of  our  means 
of  knowledge.  It  throws  itself  directly 
in  medias  res.  It  aspires  to  prove  the 
possibility  of  knowledge  by  creating  it. 
[56] 


PRAGMATISM 


In  fact,  it  determines  its  task  in  each 
domain  in  such  a  way  that  it  need  hardly 
fear  the  reproach  of  temerity.  That 
physiology,  in  spite  of  the  postulates 
which  it  involves,  may  be  treated  as  a 
positive  science  is  a  fact  which  no  one 
to-day  would  care  to  contest.  Similarly, 
it  seems,  a  psychology  which  strictly 
forbids  any  incursion  into  the  domain  of 
metaphysics,  and  which,  discarding  the 
investigation  of  causes  so-called,  aims 
only  at  being  hypothetically  explanatory, 
can  scarcely  arouse  objections.  In  reli- 
gious psychology  itself,  as  his  book  upon 
the  varieties  of  individual  religious  experi- 
ence (omitting  the  postscript)  presents 
it,  the  object  of  the  author  is  only  to 
analyse  and  explain  phenomena  empiri- 
cally from  the  point  of  view  of  the 
religious  consciousness  itself.  Who  would 
deny  the  validity  of  such  researches? 
To  seize,  to  describe  and  to  co-ordinate 
experience  as  such,  without  pronouncing 
upon  its  relation  to  reality  in  itself,  can- 
not be  an  inadmissible  temerity. 

But  again,  is  it  indeed  a  question  of  the 
[57] 


WILLIAM     JAMES 


acquisition  of  knowledge  pure  and  simple 
if,  in  the  light  of  religious  experience,  we 
undertake  to  discover  what  is  at  the 
bottom  of  the  postulates  of  psychology 
and  physiology;  if,  not  content  with 
grasping  the  relations  of  facts  among 
themselves,  we  attack  the  redoubtable 
problems  of  the  original  cause  and  of  the 
phenomena  which  the  sciences  discard 
as  transcendent  and  insoluble?  Is  it, 
moreover,  strictly  true  that  religious 
psychology,  normal  psychology  and  physi- 
ology claim  only  to  describe  and  co-ordi- 
nate appearances  without  concerning 
themselves  in  the  least  about  objective 
certainty?  Physiology,  for  its  part,  pur- 
ports to  be  a  form  of  knowledge  in  all  the 
force  of  the  term,  that  is  to  say,  really 
to  know  and  explain.  And  psychology, 
not  only  natural  but  religious  as  well, 
confident  also  in  its  postulates,  does  not 
seriously  admit  that  its  descriptions  and 
explanations  have  literally  only  a  sub- 
jective value.  However  that  may  be, 
to  search,  as  the  philosopher  early  and 
late  is  drawn  to  do,  into  the  meaning  and 
[58] 


PRAGMATISM 


the  value  of  those  postulates  themselves, 
is  to  commit  ourselves,  if  we  wish  to 
proceed  methodically  and  circumspectly, 
to  treat  of  the  relations  of  our  concep- 
tions to  existence  and  to  truth:  that 
is  to  say,  of  the  critical  problem  itself. 
At  the  point  which  we  have  reached,  it 
is  no  longer  possible  to  shirk  this  problem. 
The  philosophy  of  experience,  like  the 
others,  sees  at  a  certain  point  of  its  course 
this  stumbling-block,  as  Kant  called  it, 
barring  its  road. 

The  view  which  William  James  took 
on  this  matter  he  designated  by  a  name 
which  the  American  philosopher,  Charles 
Sanders  Peirce,  employed  in  1878,  in 
connection  with  the  same  class  of  ideas: 
the  name  of  Pragmatism.  Not  that 
William  James  considered  Pragmatism 
a  modern  invention.  His  work  on  this 
doctrine  is  entitled:  Pragmatism,  a  New 
Name  for  some  Old  Ways  of  Thinking. 
And  in  this  connection  he  places  under 
the  patronage  of  Socrates,  Aristotle, 
Locke,  Berkeley,  Hume,  and  John  Stuart 
Mill  the  work  of  his  colleagues,  Dewey, 
[59] 


WILLIAM     JAMES 


F.  C.  S.  Schiller,  and  their  followers.  But 
what  he  considered  only  fragmentary 
in  the  case  of  his  predecessors  has 
become,  or  tends  to  become,  as  he  says,' 
a  general  orientation  of  philosophic 
thought. 

The  question  of  the  value  of  experience 
is  a  very  embarrassing  one.  In  dealing 
with  physical  experience,  being  given  a 
materially  practical  object,  we  know 
quite  well  what  we  are  aiming  at  in  this 
domain  when  we  say  that  the  object's 
value  is  established  by  a  comparison  of 
our  assertions  with  facts,  as  with  a 
measure  existing  outside  ourselves.  But, 
on  the  other  hand,  if  we  are  dealing  with 
the  psychological  idea  of  consciousness, 
it  is  quite  a  different  matter.  Where 
is  now  the  duality  of  idea  and  fact,  of 
subject  and  object,  which  appears  in- 
volved in  the  idea  of  true  knowledge? 
One  willingly  admits  that  the  identity 
of  subject  and  object  which  characterizes 
consciousness  is  precisely  what  gives  to 
its  evidence  a  unique  and  unassailable 
value.  But  it  is  vain  to  attribute  a 
[60] 


PRAGMATISM 


distinctively  scientific  character  to  an 
un verifiable  affirmation;  and,  after  all, 
we  do  not  in  the  least  degree  know  what 
are,  in  essence  and  effect,  the  states  of 
which  we  have  consciousness.  The  term 
consciousness,  which  signifies  knowledge 
of  self,  and  which  supposes,  besides,  an 
understanding  subject  corresponding  to 
the  object  understood,  expresses  in  reality 
only  a  postulate.  Sciousness  is  the  term 
which  ought  to  be  used  to  designate 
the  phenomenon  correctly.  Sciousness: 
that  is  to  say  a  modification  of  the  think- 
ing subject  grasped  in  a  purely  subjective 
fashion.  But  who  can  prove  that  such 
a  knowledge  has  any  real  value? 

Much  less,  then,  does  the  religious  con- 
sciousness contain  within  itself  the  proof 
of  the  reality  of  its  objects.  How  are 
we  to  verify,  that  is,  to  compare  with  an 
immediate  perception  of  things,  the  idea 
which  the  believer  conceives  of  the  cause 
of  his  inner  transformation,  since  the 
cause  cannot  in  any  degree  be  dissociated 
from  the  subjective  feeling  of  this  trans- 
formation? The  threefold  division  of 
[61] 


WILLIAM     JAMES 


experience  doubtless  corresponds  to  ex- 
terior phenomena.  But  is  this  anything 
else  than  an  indication  of  the  more  and 
more  complicated  problems  which  con- 
front science,  questions  which  it  might 
deem  itself  actually  incapable  of  dealing 
with,  but  which,  however  difficult,  should 
not  lead  us  to  an  abandonment  of  the 
mechanistic  method  of  explanation,  which 
would  be  nothing  less  than  suicidal. 

Not  only,  then,  is  the  question  of  the 
value  of  experience  inevitable,  but  any 
clear  solution  seems  possible  only  by  the 
reduction  of  the  second  and  third  forms 
of  experience  to  the  original  physical 
experience. 

William  James  proceeds  in  this  matter 
as  in  all  others;  he  goes  from  the  known 
to  the  unknown,  from  the  easy  to  the 
difficult,  these  words  being  understood, 
moreover,  in  their  common  and  vulgar 
acceptation. 

What  is  the  necessary  and  sufficient 
condition  in  the  physical  order,  that  an 
idea  be  received  as  true?  Since  science 
[62] 


PRAGMATISM 


is  fundamentally  experimental,  an  idea 
scientifically  true  is  no  longer  an  idea 
considered  as  the  portrait  resembling  the 
thing  which  it  represents;  it  is  the  con- 
ception of  a  formula  which  tells  us  what 
we  ought  to  expect  when  we  affirm  that 
a  certain  phenomenon  exists.  The  law 
of  falling  bodies  signifies  that  if  I  release 
the  body  which  I  hold  in  my  hand,  I 
shall  see  it  on  the  earth  at  the  end  of  a 
certain  time  determinable  a  priori.  How 
does  this  phenomenon  operate  intrinsi- 
cally, of  what  actions  is  it  the  result, 
what  is  really  its  cause?  Science  answers 
these  questions  only  up  to  a  certain 
point  and  then  only  apparently.  Sooner 
or  later  it  finds  itself  in  the  presence  of  a 
law  which  is  not  contained  in  any  more 
general  law,  and  which  has  no  other 
significance  than  to  indicate  a  certain 
constant  conjunction  of  sensible  per- 
ceptions. 

In  what,  then,  exactly,    according    to 

science,  does  the  truth  of  an  idea  consist? 

It    consists    wholly    in    the    faculty    of 

adapting  the  thought  of  man  to  reality. 

[63] 


WILLIAM     JAMES 


An  idea  is  a  prediction.  It  says:  If 
you  are  placed  in  a  certain  set  of  condi- 
tions you  will  see  certain  phenomena 
take  place.  The  true  idea  is  the  one 
which  predicts  truly:  which,  put  to  the 
test,  keeps  its  promise.  The  true  idea 
is  the  one  which  pays,  which  guarantees 
a  work  remunerative,  which,  applied, 
gives  us  the  desired  hold  upon  reality. 
The  truth  of  an  idea,  then,  is  not 
determined  by  its  origin,  sensible  or 
rational,  nor  by  its  logical  relation  to 
this  or  that  principle;  it  only  depends 
upon  its  results.  The  truth  of  an  idea 
is  constituted  by  its  workings.  True  signi- 
fies verified  or  verifiable,  nothing  less, 
nothing  more. 

And  since  verification  is  necessarily 
an  action,  the  action,  of  some  one,  verity 
is  not  an  entity  suspended  in  the  void; 
it  is  a  proof,  made  or  capable  of  being 
made  by  certain  individuals;  it  is  a 
certain  satisfaction,  susceptible  of  being 
experienced  by  beings  such  as  a  human 
person. 

There  are,  moreover,  various  objects 
[64] 


PRAGMATISM 


about  which  man  may  desire  this  satis- 
faction. He  may  wish  to  adapt  himself 
to  things  from  a  physical  point  of  view; 
the  true  idea  in  this  case  aims  at  a  ma- 
terial modification  of  things,  and  tells 
us  what  sensible  perception  must  be  given 
in  order  that  a  certain  other  may  be  pro- 
duced. Man  may  desire  to  represent  to 
himself  more  easily  and  conveniently, 
in  a  manner  better  adapted  to  the 
tendency  of  his  intelligence,  the  relations 
of  a  certain  set  of  phenomena  one  to 
another;  this  desire  is  met  by  scientific 
theory.  We  should  sum  up  faithfully 
enough  the  necessary  and  sufficient  con- 
ditions of  a  true  idea  by  defining  it  as 
follows:  an  idea  which  has  the  property 
of  adapting  us,  mentally  or  physically, 
to  some  reality.  "What  meaning  indeed 
can  an  idea's  truth  have,  save  its  power  of 
adapting  us  either  mentally  or  physically 
to  a  reality?"  1 

If  one  wishes,  in  a  word,  to  designate 
the    doctrine    of   knowledge    which,    for 

1  The  Journal  of  Philosophy,  Psychology  and  Scientific 
Methods,  Dec.  3,  1908,  p.  692. 

[65] 

6 


WILLIAM     JAMES 


the  philosopher,  disengages  itself  from 
the  scrutiny  of  science,  it  seems,  accord- 
ing to  James,  that  it  should  be  called 
pragmatism  (from  TrpSy/ia,  action),  as 
opposed  to  conceptualism,  or  abstract 
rationalism./  Science,  indeed,  subordinates 
ideas  to  facts,  and  not  facts  to  ideas. 
To  science,  reality  is  not  a  function  of 
truth:  truth  is  a  function  of  reality. 
Facts  truly  real  always  come  back, 
in  the  last  analysis,  to  observable  man- 
ifestations of  some  human  action.)' 

If  such  is  the  criterion  of  the  true 
idea,  can  one  say  that  this  takes  place 
in  psychological  and  religious  experience, 
as  it  incontestably  takes  place  in  the 
domain  of  physical  experience? 

Early  in  his  career,  the  attention  of 
William  James  was  directed  to  this 
fundamental  problem.  One  of  his  first 
philosophic  writings  was  a  letter  which 
he  addressed  in  French  to  the  editors  of 
the  Critique  Philosophique,  in  1878,  under 
the  title:  Some  considerations  upon  the 
objective  method.  He  denied  the  claim 
[66] 


PRAGMATISM 


that  truth  could  be  judged  according 
to  some  abstract  concept  and  not  by  the 
living  and  real  experience  of  man  himself,/' 
He  agreed  on  this  point,  he  stated,  with 
the  philosophic  principles  professed  by 
his  good  friends  Renouvier  and  Pillon, 
and  he  took  pleasure  in  testifying  to  this 
agreement  in  the  dedication  of  his  Princi- 
ples of  Psychology  (1890):  "To  my  dear 
friend  Frangois  Pillon,  as  a  token  of 
affection  and  an  acknowledgment  of  what 
I  owe  to  the  Critique  Philosophique" 

The  views  propounded  by  James  in 
1878  became  more  and  more  confirmed 
in  his  opinion  by  reflection.  Why,  he 
demanded,  should  the  true  idea,  as 
defined  by  pragmatism,  be  excluded  from 
psychic  experience  and  from  religious 
experience  as  such?  In  fact,  the  employ- 
ment of  certain  psychic  or  religious 
means  may  lead  to  the  desired  result 
quite  as  well  as  the  employment  of  purely 
physical  means.  -^One  movement  may 
be  produced  by  another  movement,  but 
on  the  other  hand  an  idea  or  even  a 
movement  may,  as  experience  teaches 
[67] 


WILLIAM     JAMES 


us,  be  produced  by  an  idea.  We  have 
no  need,  in  order  to  know  whether  a 
certain  idea  is  efficacious,  to  revert  to  the 
physical  conditions,  doubtless  indeter- 
minable in  their  totality,  of  the  produc- 
tion of  this  idea;  it  is  sufficient  to  consider 
it  in  itself.  Here,  where  the  idea  is 
present,  a  certain  phenomenon  appears; 
there,  where  it  is  absent,  the  phenomenon 
does  not  take  place.  What  more  do  we 
require  in  order  to  recognize  the  idea 
as  the  cause  of  the  phenomenon?  The 
idea  of  a  certain  end  to  be  pursued 
awakens  in  me  activities  which,  if  this 
idea  had  not  intervened,  would  have 
remained  dormant.  Such  a  religious  be- 
lief increases  and  augments  my  energy 
extraordinarily  or  even  cures  an  illness 
of  my  body.  >  Are  not  these  facts  pre- 
cisely analogous  to  the  service  rendered 
by  a  physical  formula  to  one  who  wishes 
to  perform  a  material  work? 

-  There  is  even  this  difference  in  favour 
of  the  religious  idea,  that  while  the  sci- 
entific idea  can  be  only  the  proof  of  a 
relation  pre-existing  in  nature,  religious 
[68] 


PRAGMATISM 


belief  can  itself  create  the  connection 
which  it  affirms."  Faith  is  a  force:  it 
cures,  exalts,  engenders,  by  its  own  virtue, 
when  all  physical  means  fail.  There 
are  cases  where  the  idea  verifies  itself 
by  that  alone  which  it  is. 

We  should  not,  then,  reserve  to  physical 
experience  the  monopoly  of  the  true 
idea.  If  we  understand  the  word  Truth 
in  its  really  scientific  sense,  we  find  that 
the  true  idea  is  encountered  likewise  in 
psychological  experience  and  even  in 
religious  experience. 

Certain  people,  however,  interpose  ob- 
jections. It  is  not  legitimate,  they  con- 
tend, to  identify  the  verification  of  which 
an  idea  is  susceptible  in  psychologic  and 
religious  matters  with  that  which  it 
receives  in  a  scientific  matter.  In  one 
case  it  is  the  experience  of  all  which 
affirms  the  faithfulness  of  an  idea  to  its 
promises  and  its  fidelity;  in  the  other  it 
is  only  an  experience  more  or  less  particu- 
lar and  individual.  ^Science  is  us;  con- 
sciousness, religion,  is  only  me.  How 
can  the  same  value  be  attributed  to 
[69] 


WILLIAM     JAMES 


universal  experience  and  to  individual 
experience?  Scientific  experience  is  ob- 
jective experience,  experience  in  itself. 
It  grows  and  becomes  fixed,  thanks  to  a 
critical  labour  which  disengages  a  totality 
of  ideas  from  individual  impressions  and 
exists  by  itself  henceforth  as  a  distinct 
reality,  imposing  itself  upon  the  indi- 
vidual consciousness.  Religious  experi- 
ence on  the  contrary  is  experience  purely 
and  irremediably  subjective;  it  is  experi- 
ence, not  as  substantive,  but  as  verb: 
to  experience;  it  is  the  individual  actually 
experiencing  this  or  that  impression  which 
he  himself  perhaps  will  not  experience, 
will  not  be  able  to  experience  to-morrow. 
One,  in  a  word,  is  knowledge,  the  other 
is  only  feeling.  > 

Within  the  pragmatic  argument,  more- 
over, they  add,  a  sophistry  is  hidden. 
The  true  idea,  according  to  pragmatism, 
is  an  idea  which  verifies  itself.  Nothing 
truer  than  this  definition.  But  the  idea 
verifies  itself  because  it  is  true;  it  is  not 
true  because  it  verifies  itself./  The  verifi- 
cation is  the  sign,  not  the  cause,  of  the 
[70] 


PRAGMATISM 


verity.  Pragmatism  confounds  the  order 
of  things  with  the  order  of  the  operations 
which  we  go  through  in  order  to  know 
them.>  Certainly  an  idea  for  us  only 
becomes  true  when  we  have  been  able 
to  verify  it.  c<But  in  itself  it  was,  before 
any  examination,  intrinsically  true  or 
false.  The  radii  of  a  circle  did  not  wait 
to  be  equal  until  we  knew  them  to  be  so. 
The  verification  has  only  been  able  to 
bring  into  prominence  a  quality  of  the 
idea  which  pre-existed  in  it^>  And  every 
effort  of  science  tends  to  discover  and 
disengage  the  truth,  eternally  existing, 
not  to  form  out  of  the  objective  elements 
of  experience  a  truth  always  equally 
relative  and  illusory.  >  Either  pragma- 
tism, then,  is  without  value,  or  it  pre- 
supposes the  very  theory  of  truth  which 
it  claims  to  replace. 

Such  are  the  objections  which  many 
oppose  to  pragmatism.  >They  clearly 
betray  certain  metaphysical  prejudices 
as  well  as  certain  habits  of  mind  con- 
tracted passively  rather  than  inevitably 
under  the  influence  of  scientific  research. 
[71] 


WILLIAM     JAMES 


Truth,  it  is  often  supposed,  implies  a 
value,  not  subjective  but  objective.  A 
true  idea  is  not  only  true  for  me,  it  is 
true  in  itself.  And  in  what  then  can 
this  property  consist  if  not  in  the  relation 
of  the  idea  to  an  object  fixed]and  absolute, 
an  object  which  may  reside  within  the 
idea  or  outside  it,  but  which  necessarily 
distinguishes  itself  from  the  idea  so  far 
as  it  is  mine,  and  even  from  the  idea  so 
far  as  it  is  verified  by  my  experience  or 
by  the  experience  of  all  men?  The  true 
idea,  it  is  concluded,  can  only  remain 
true  through  conformity  to  its  object. 

The  pragmatism  of  William  James 
makes  no  difficulty  about  accepting  this 
formula;  but  for  him  it  is  true  of  this 
definition  as  of  the  general  concept  of 
truth:  it  represents,  not  a  dogma  to 
subscribe  to,  but  a  problem  to  solve, 
and  to  solve  empirically. 

In  what,  precisely,  does  the  object,  the 
norm  of  the  true  idea,  consist?  It  may 
be  conceived  in  two  ways./  According 
to  certain  philosophers  who  voluntarily 
call  themselves  intellectualists  or  rational- 
[72] 


PRAGMATISM 


ists,  this  object  would  be  something 
eternal,  absolutely  definite,  immutable, 
intelligible  in  itself  and  by  itself..  In 
other  words,  it  would  be  the  truth  itself, 
as  a  thing  in  itself.  Thus  the  intellectu- 
alist  doctrine  may  be  summed  up  in 
these  terms:  the  true  idea  is  that  which 
conforms  to  truth.  Irreproachable  affir- 
mation !  But  how  do  we  know  that  there 
exists  such  a  static  and  dead  truth  as  that 
which  this  maxim  supposes  if  it  is  not  a 
pure  tautology,  and  what  means  have  we 
of  verifying  its  existence?  The  sort  of 
science  sought  here,  in  any  case,  cannot 
be  furnished  by  experience,  and  James 
professes  to  believe  only  in  experience. 

It  is  proper,  then,  to  inquire  whether 
the  object  which  the  true  idea  necessarily 
supposes  may  not  be  something  quite 
different  from  the  transcendent  truth 
of  the  intellectualists. 

In  fact,  another  conception  is  possible, 
namely  that  of  common  sense,  in  the 
view  of  which  the  object  to  which  our 
ideas  must  conform  is  not  a  truth  outside 
of  things,  unseizable  and  problematic, 
[73] 


WILLIAM     JAMES 


but  the  reality  itself  in  so  far  as 
it  is  given  by  experience.  •  It  is  with 
this  reality,  properly  defined,  that  the 
pragmatism  of  James  concerns  itself; 
it  is  in  reality  pure  and  simple  that  he 
finds  the  source  both  of  the  existence  and 
of  the  properties  of  the  idea,  without 
excepting  its  capacity  of  being  true. 
Knowledge,  in  the  exact  sense  of  the 
word,  is  not,  for  him,  anything  ready- 
made  and  pre-existing  of  which  our 
experience  offers  only  a  copy,  more  or 
less  rough  and  unfaithful.  Living  experi- 
ence is,  itself,  the  original  and  direct 
contact  of  the  mind  with  reality.  Knowl- 
edge, correctly  so-called,  only  comes  after; 
it  is  the  result  of  a  work  wrought  by  the 
mind  upon  experience,  following  the  sug- 
gestions of  experience  itself.  >  Without 
allowing  ourselves  to  be  cheated  by  the 
formulas  which  we  invent  in  order  to 
sum  up  this  experience,  we  can  only 
seek  the  real  in  that  which  is  the  most 
immediately  present  to  us. 

For,  if  it  is  indeed  this  reality,  and  not 
some  phantom  of  truth  in  itself  which 
[74] 


PRAGMATISM 


constitutes  the  object  to  which  our  ideas 
must  relate  themselves  in  order  to  be 
true,  there  is  no  doubt  that  our  moral 
and  religious  beliefs  cannot  be  true  in 
the  same  degree  as  the  affirmations  of 
science.  Science  is  a  sure  and  powerful 
means  of  action  upon  the  real;  but 
psychic  forces,  moral  and  religious,  per- 
mit us  no  less  to  measure  ourselves  with 
it  and  to  make  it  ours.  Science  has 
given  to  the  human  race  telegraphy, 
electricity,  the  diagnosis  and  cure  of 
certain  maladies.  (,  Religion  gives  to  some 
men  serenity,  peace,  moral  power,  the 
cure  of  evils,  even  physical  ones  recalci- 
trant to  scientific  treatment;  or  again, 
a  faith,  an  ardour  and  an  enthusiasm 
which  transform  the  personality  to  its 
very  depths  and  which  confer  upon  it 
an  extraordinary  power  over  itself  and 
over  the  spirit  of  other  men.  > 

Arrived  at  this  point  of  his  argument, 

William    James    took    account    of    the 

philosophy   of   Henri  Bergson;   and   he 

was    struck    by    the   fact    that    certain 

[75] 


WILLIAM     JAMES 


parts  of  this  philosophy  could  lend  sup- 
port to  his  own  theory.  He  maintained 
that  intellectual  and  conceptual  knowl- 
edge, of  which  positive  science  is  the  most 
perfect  example,  is  not  original  and 
equivalent  to  the  real,  but  derived  and 
relative./  Yet  how  is  this  derivation 
brought  about?  An  important  question, 
for  a  proposed  explanation  becomes  much 
more  probable  when  it  shows,  not  only 
that  two  terms  are  bound  together  but 
also  how  the  transition  may  be  made 
from  one  to  the  other. 

But,  iwhile  William  James  had  left 
this  problem  in  the  dark,  Bergson,  start- 
ing from  the  principle  that  the  immediate 
data  of  consciousness  are  essentially  con- 
tinuous, indistinct  and  mobile,  and  con- 
sequently incapable  of  being  adequately 
represented  by  concepts  the  essence  of 
which  is  discontinuity  and  fixity,  ex- 
plained exactly  how,  in  order  to  satisfy 
our  practical  needs  in  a  spatial  world, 
the  understanding,  in  applying  to  the 
purely  qualitative  data  of  consciousness 
those  forms  of  quantity,  homogeneity 
[76] 


PRAGMATISM 


and  immutability  which  it  bears  within 
itself,  forms  a  group  of  conveniently 
handled  objects  which  are  precisely  those 
which  science  applies  itself  to  grasping, 
defining  and  classifying. 

Thus,  starting  from  another  point, 
and  occupied  with  other  problems,  Henri 
Bergson  upon  a  leading  question  arrived 
at  views  analogous  to  those  of  James, 
and,  by  the  development  which  he  gave 
them,  very  conveniently  completed  the 
theory  of  the  American  professor./  What 
could  be  more  significant  than  such  a 
chance  encounter!  William  James  was 
gratified  and  took  pride  in  it,  and  gladly 
called  attention  to  it  in  the  Hibbert 
lectures  given  in  Manchester  College, 
Oxford,  in  1909. 

The  thought  of  James,  however,  follows 
its  own  course,  which  is  not  identified 
with  the  progress  of  Bergson's  philosophy. 
To  Bergson,  if  the  understanding  alters 
any  subject  given  through  immediate 
experience,  it  is  because  it  makes 
for  the  practical.  With  James,  if 
intellectual  knowledge  is  inadequate,  it 
[77] 


WILLIAM     JAMES 


is  because,  being  accommodated  to 
the  conditions  of  a  practice  of  a  purely 
material  sort,  it  is  ill-adapted  to  pure 
practice,  which  would  be  the  direct 
action  of  soul  upon  soul.  Besides,  if 
intellectual  knowledge  is,  to  Bergson, 
derived  and  not  original,  it  is  because 
it  contains  certain  elements  which  appear 
foreign  to  the  immediate  and  purely 
intuitive  data  of  consciousness;  these 
in  fact  are  reduced  to  durance  in  them- 
selves, isolated,  not  only  from  space  but 
from  time  itself.  For  James  it  is  exactly 
the  degree  of  complexity  and  of  richness 
of  experience  which  measures  the  degree 
of  its  authenticity.  Experience  abso- 
lutely immediate  and  intuitive  would  be 
total  experience. 

In  this  way  the  doctrine  of  William 
James  concerning  the  relation  of  reality 
to  experience  is  rounded  out.  Our  ex- 
perience differs  from  the  real,  its  object, 
in  so  far  as  it  is  concerned  with  a  partial 
and  incomplete  experience,  beyond  which 
we  may  aim  at  an  experience  at  once 
deeper  and  broader.  But  in  proportion 
[78] 


PRAGMATISM 


as  we  comprehend  more  things  we  are 
so  much  the  better  able  to  put  each  of 
them  in  its  place,  to  consider  it  in  all  its 
relations,  and  thus  to  arrive  at  a  just 
conclusion;  which  amounts  to  saying 
that  we  are  still  nearer  the  point  of  view 
of  the  real  itself. 

Religious  experience,  which  is  of  all 
experience  the  deepest,  the  broadest  and 
the  richest,  gives  us  a  glimpse  of  this 
pre-eminent  reality  .>  Fully  concrete,  the 
truly  real  is  a  relation  existing  not  only 
between  concepts  but  between  persons, 
not  only  between  things  mutually  ex- 
terior and  pushing  their  way  about 
among  each  other  like  marbles,  but 
between  free  beings,  communicating  in- 
teriorly among  themselves  by  action. 

Im  Anfang  war  die  Tat.1 

But  if  it  is  true,  that  among  all  our 
modes  of  knowledge  this  total  experience 
to  which  religious  experience  tends  to 
approximate  alone  coincides  with  the 
truly  real,  it  follows  that  the  objectivity 
of  which  the  other  forms  of  experience 

1In  the  beginning  was  the  deed.    Goethe,  Faust,  I. 

[79] 


WILLIAM     JAMES 


have  possessed  themselves  is,  at  bottom, 
only  their  relation  to  religious  experience. 
In  so  far  as  the  personal  and  relatively 
closed  consciousness  finds  in  a  conscious- 
ness open  to  the  action  of  other  conscious- 
nesses the  explanation  of  its  own  nature, 
it  may  legitimately  be  considered  as  a 
reality.  In  so  far  as  the  sciences  of 
matter  receive  from  psychological  ex- 
perience certain  principles  which  account 
for  their  own  experience,  in  so  far  are 
they  other  than  an  abstract  classification 
of  images  without  originals. 

The  objectivity  of  the  sciences  and 
that  of  psychology  depends,  then,  upon 
the  objectivity  of  religious  experience, 
far  from  the  former  being  conceived  as 
alone  effective  and  true.  And  the  real 
world,  seen  under  its  true  aspect,  if  it  is 
in  conformity  to  the  idea  under  which 
the  sciences  conceive  it,  is,  above  all,  in 
its  very  foundation,  whatever  the  moral 
and  religious  life  of  the  soul  proves  and 
makes  it.  The  soul  is  freedom  itself, 
and  this  freedom  is  the  root  of  existence 
and  of  experience.  Experience  lays  hold 
[80] 


PRAGMATISM 


of  what  is,  what  happens.  -For  nothing 
in  the  universe  is  ready-made.  Every- 
where and  always  the  universe  is  in  the 
making.  .,  The  humblest  consciousness 
which,  through  confidence  and  sympathy, 
joins  other  consciousnesses  in  the  search 
for  better  things,  collaborates  with  God, 
in  this  world  of  which  he  is  a  citizen,  to 
create  loftier  destinies. 


[81] 


IV 


JAMEJ 


calls  the  doctrine  in  which  his 
pragmatism  results  Radical  Empiricism. 
He  does  not  claim  that  this  conclusion 
is  its  necessary  outcome.  -(Pragmatism 
is  essentially  a  method,  consisting  in 
interpreting  all  concepts  in  terms  of 
action; 7  the  philosophic  doctrine  to  which 
the  employment  of  this  method  shall 
lead  is  not  predetermined.  With  our 
author  the  result  obtained  is  the  con- 
ception of  an  experience  which,  while 
remaining  living  and  individual,  becomes 
more  and  more  comprehensive,  and  which 
in  proportion  as  it  is  broader  tends  more 
and  more  to  constitute,  in  itself  alone, 
the  being  itself.  >  Total  immediate  experi- 
ence and  truly  objective  reality  are  one;/ 
such  is  the  principle. 

It  follows  from  this  that  the  meta- 
[82] 


METAPHYSICAL     VIEWS 

physical  problems  involved  in  the  theories 
of  the  positive  sciences  do  not  necessarily 
transcend  our  power  of  comprehension./- 
Experience    itself,   well   directed,  allows 
us  to  approach  metaphysics. 

It  was,  then,  in  perfect  accord  with  his 
experimental  researches  that  James,  par- 
ticularly after  he  had  studied  the  con- 
ditions of  knowledge,  should  have  applied 
himself  to  the  study  of  various  problems 
which,  in  the  general  opinion,  belong  to 
this  form  of  speculation.  >• 


In  1897,  having  been  commissioned  to 
give  at  Harvard  the  lecture  upon  human 
immortality  instituted  by  Miss  Caroline 
Haskell  Ingersoll,  Professor  James  treated 
the  subject  according  to  his  largely 
empirical  method  and  brought  to  it 
certain  original  ideas. 

What,  he  queried,  is  the  great  objection 

which  is  opposed  to  the  possibility  of 

human  immortality?     It  is  that  thought 

is  a  function  of  the  brain.     Nothing  truer, 

[83] 


WILLIAM     JAMES 


as  William  James  the  physiologist  freely 
admits.  But  what  does  the  word  func- 
tion here  imply? 

One  of  the  ideas  by  means  of  which 
we  define  this  word  is  that  of  production. 
When  we  say  that  light  is  a  function  of 
the  electric  circuit,  or  that  it  is  a  function 
of  the  waterfall  to  furnish  power,  we 
understand  thereby  that  one  of  the  two 
phenomena  produces  the  other.  In  a 
case  of  this  kind,  there  is  no  doubt  that 
the  disappearance  of  the  cause  entails 
that  of  the  effect.  But  is  this  the  only 
sense  of  the  word  function  known  to  us? 

The  physical  world  itself  offers  any 
number  of  cases  where  the  function  of 
an  agent  is  not  productive  but  simply 
transmissive./  Such  is  the  function  of  a 
lens  in  relation  to  light.  ^But  what  is 
to  prevent  our  believing  that  the  brain, 
instead  of  creating  thought,  is  simply  the 
channel  through  which  it  is  transmitted 
from  a  spiritual  world  into  our  material 
world  ?y  Nothing,  moreover,  runs  counter 
to  the  view  that  in  the  spiritual  world 
itself  our  individuality  has  its  true  and 
[84] 


METAPHYSICAL     VIEWS 

lasting  foundation.^,  But  if  this  is  the 
case,  it  is  of  slight  importance  if  the  brain 
be  disintegrated;  spiritual  individuality 
would  not  be  affected  by  that,  but  would 
exist  in  the  world  where  it  has  its  origin, 
not,  it  would  appear,  without  preserving 
some  modifications  received  during  its 
earthly  existence.V 

Physiology  cannot  prove  these  things; 
but  no  more  can  it  contradict  them.  Its 
only  legitimate  conclusion  in  these  mat- 
ters is  the  Ignorabimus  of  Dubois-Rey- 
mond. 

On  the  other  hand,  a  great  number  of 
the  facts  of  psychological  experience,  such 
as  men  have  observed  in  all  times, 
notably  those  which  that  profound  psy- 
chologist Frederic  W.  H.  Myers  with  all 
the  scholar's  care  has  explained  in  his 
articles  in  the  Proceedings  of  the  Society 
for  Psychical  Research,  and  in  his  cele- 
brated book,  Human  Personality  and 
its  Survival  of  Bodily  Death  (1903)  — 
these  facts  tend  to  show  that  our 
psychic  life  is  effectively  susceptible  of 
transcending  the  capacity  of  our  brain, 
[85] 


WILLIAM     JAMES 


and  that  in  certain  cases,  at  least,  this 
organ  is  really  only  an  organ  of  trans- 
mission and  not  an  agent  of  production. 
Thus  it  is  that  certain  cases  of  religious 
conversion,  of  providential  direction  in 
answer  to  prayer,  of  instantaneous  cure, 
of  premonition,  of  apparitions  at  the 
moment  of  death,  of  clairvoyant  visions 
or  impressions,  of  mediumistic  power, 
unexplainable  by  the  intrinsic  properties 
of  the  brain,  become  intelligible,  if  the 
brain  is  an  organ  of  communication 
between  our  world  and  another.  > 

If,  then,  the  immortality  of  thexhuman 
individual  cannot  be  considered  as  demon- 
strated, it  must  be  acknowledged  that 
for  any  man  who  relies  only  upon 
experience  and  who  follows  it  wherever 
it  leads,  the  principal  objection  that 
may  be  urged  against  it  is  no  longer 
valid. 

The    celebrated    work,    The   Varieties 
of  Religious  Experience  (1902),  shows  us 
James  venturing,  in  a  postscript  or  appen- 
dix, upon  the  evidence  of  his  deepest  and 
[86] 


METAPHYSICAL     VIEWS 

most  intimate  personal  experience,  to 
crown  his  distinctively  scientific  beliefs 
with  the  super-beliefs  of  a  religious  and 
metaphysical  character.  --Such  are  the 
belief  in  the  reality  of  the  good  and 
powerful  being  whom  the  religious  call 
God;  the  belief  in  a  spiritual  relation 
between  this  being  and  ourselves;  even 
the  belief  in  a  direct  action  of  this  being, 
and  of  spiritual  powers  in  general,  upon 
the  details,  as  well  as  the  whole  of  the 
phenomena,  of  our  universe.  > 


* 
*       * 


The  next  to  the  last  work  published  by 
William  James,  A  Pluralistic  Universe 
(1909),  treats  of  monistic  idealism,  of 
Hegel,  of  the  empirical  pantheism  of 
Fechner,  of  the  relation  of  the  one  and  the 
many  according  to  Bergson,  of  the  conti- 
nuity of  experience,  of  God  as  a  perfect 
being,  of  our  beliefs  as  elements  of  reality ; 
all  subjects  of  a  metaphysical  character. 

From  one  end  of  this  work  to  the  other 
a  very  strict  sense  of  the  fundamental 
[87] 


WILLIAM     JAMES 


identity  of  experience  and  reality  is  evi- 
dent, and,  at  the  same  time,  the  effort  to 
persuade  the  individual  to  break  through 
the  barriers  which  separate  his  own 
consciousness  from  the  consciousness  of 
other  beings. 

Philosophy,  we  are  told,  is  a  thing  of 
passionate  vision  rather  than  of  logic; 
for  logic  can  only  find,  after  the  event, 
reasons  to  explain  the  ideas  of  the 
vision/ 

James  sets  to  work  to  convict  of  im- 
potence and  of  nullity  the  Absolute  of 
the  Idealists,  which  is  not  felt  and  lived, 
but  dialectically  constructed  by  our  un- 
derstanding.) How  can  this  artificial  con- 
cept, void  of  reality,  influence  our  conduct 
and  our  condition? 

On  the  other  hand  he  accepts  cordially, 
from  the  philosophy  of  the  celebrated 
psycho-physicist,  Theodor  Fechner,  the 
concrete  doctrine  of  an  Earth-Soul,  as 
a  pragmatic  substitute  for  the  abstract 
One  of  the  Idealists.  Reduced  to  their 
own  power  alone,  as  Fechner  points  out, 
our  consciousnesses  could  not  disclose 
[88] 


METAPHYSICAL     VIEWS 

themselves  to  each  other.  One  individual 
in  his  primitive  condition  is  impervious  to 
another.  But  through  the  action  of  higher 
powers,  themselves  fundamentally  united 
with  the  divine  consciousness,  our  indi- 
vidual consciousnesses  may  enter  into 
relations  one  with  another  —  may  mu- 
tually inter-penetrate,  love  and  under- 
stand each  other.  Fechner  has  clearly 
seen  that  it  is  essential  from  the  moral 
point  of  view,  but  unintelligible  from 
the  physical,  that  a  man  should  surmise 
what  is  within  another  man  and  interest 
himself  therein.  The  respective  relation 
of  diverse  individuals  to  a  superior  con- 
sciousness furnishes  the  solution  of  this 
troublesome  problem.)? 

Are  we,  however,  in  the  earthly  life 
itself,  asks  James,  as  completely  strangers 
one  to  another  as  Fechner  believes?  Do 
we  live  in  this  world,  do  we  die,  neces- 
sarily alone?  We  are  irremediably  alone, 
it  is  true,  if  we  consent  to  think  only 
with  our  senses  and  our  intellect.  But 
as  Henri  Bergson  has  clearly  seen,  there 
is  within  us  another  way  of  touching 
[89] 


WILLIAM     JAMES 


reality  than  through  sensible  and  dialectic 
experience.  An  intuition  exists  through 
which  two  beings,  instead  of  shutting 
themselves  up  in  their  respective  indi- 
vidualities like  epicurean  atoms,  may 
inter-penetrate  without  becoming  identi- 
fied with  each  other.  "All  is  one,"  said 
Pascal, "  one  is  the  other,  like  the  Trinity." 

^The  God  in  whom  we  can  unite  ourselves 
one  to  another,  who  has  the  power  to 
cure  the  natural  blindness  of  our  soul 
with  regard  to  the  inwardness  of  other 
souls,  —  this  God  of  love  and  of  intelli- 
gence is  not  far  from  us,  he  is  within  usp> 

\The  connection  which  the  Idealist-in- 
tellectualists  vainly  hoped  to  impose 
upon  things  from  outside  by  means  of 
abstract  and  inert  formulas,  we  find 
sketched,  imitated  in  the  things  them- 
selves, if  behind  their  apparent  relation 
of  pure  juxtaposition  we  know  how,  by 
a  profounder,  more  direct  experience,  to 
grasp  their  relations  of  inter-conjunction, 
of  mutual  participation,  finally  of  intimate 
fusion,  y 

Now  the  continuous  stream  of  con- 
[90] 


METAPHYSICAL     VIEWS 

sciousness,  attentively  observed,  offers 
us  something  quite  different  from  fixed 
and  respectively  homogeneous  elements 
juxtaposed  one  to  another.  It  is  when, 
separated  more  or  less  from  feeling,  and 
as  it  were  relaxed,  it  retards  its  natural 
movement,  as  happens  especially  in  scien- 
tific experience,  that  the  thought  sees 
before  it  the  semblances  of  discretely 
multiple  substances.  In  its  true  and 
normal  life,  where  there  is  feeling  as 
well  as  intelligence,  the  consciousness  is 
animated  by  a  rapid  movement,  and  it 
perceives,  not  substances,  but  perpetual 
and  changing  transitions,  an  intimate 
combination  of  qualities,  and  not  distinct 
entities. >  This  arithmetical  multiplicity 
is  only  found  in  inert  things,  imagined  by 
a  mind  limited  to  thought  alone;  it  is 
absent  from  the  concrete  mind,  from 
which  the  real  being,  finally,  is  not  to 
be  distinguished. 

The  more  we  force  ourselves  to  see 
things  in  a  natural  way,  and  not  to  use 
our  eyes  like  a  rude  microscope  or  tele- 
scope, the  more  we  see  that  beings  are 
[91] 


WILLIAM     JAMES 


one  with  their  relations  —  relations  which 
are  fundamentally  of  a  metaphysical 
nature,  which  unite  without  assimilating, 
and  which  allow  individuality  and  plu- 
rality, indispensable  conditions  of  our 
experience  and  of  our  existence,  to  exist 
conjointly  with  the  tendency  toward  the 
harmony  and  living  union  which  belong 
to  the  perfect  existence./ 

The  essential  pluralism  of  things  is 
thus  more  credible  than  their  absolute 
reduction  to  unity.  God  himself  may 
be  conceived  as  a  person  who  does  not 
exclude  the  existence  of  other  persons. 

Need  it  be  said,  now,  that  these  things 
are,  purely  and  simply,  that  is  to  say  that 
in  their  essence  they  are,  once  for  all, 
eternally  and  immutably  all  that  they 
may  and  should  beP^^Would  the  supreme 
formula,  the  principle  of  necessity,  that 
is  to  say  universal  identity  which  science 
dreams  of,  be  the  measure  of  the  complete 
being? 

Judging  by  concrete  and  real  experi- 
ence, such  a  doctrine  is  inadmissible. 
For,  according  to  this  experience,  the 
[92] 


METAPHYSICAL     VIEWS 

being  is  essentially  living,  self-producing, 
self -creating;  it  is  not  exposed  to  our 
notice  for  all  eternity  like  an  object 
ready-made  in  a  shop.  Even  our  beliefs 
and  our  efforts  are  factors  in  its  history, 
which  is  its  substance.V  We  are  the 
friends  and  the  collaborators  of  God. 
It  depends  upon  us  in  a  certain  measure 
to  render  habitable  or  uninhabitable  the 
world  in  which  we  live,;'  And  in  the 
same  measure  as  we  have  brought  about 
the  triumph  of  the  principles  of  sympathy, 
of  understanding  of  the  feelings  and 
ideas  of  others,  of  justice  rendered  all 
intentions,  of  disinterestedness,  of  beauty, 
of  heroism,  and  of  devotion  to  ideal 
causes,  this  principle  will  survive.)) 


[93] 


PEDAGOGY 


EVEIT 


system  of  philosophy  explic- 
itly or  implicitly  ends  in  a  doctrine 
of  education.  William  James,  for  his 
part,  considered  empty  and  futile  any 
assertion  which  did  not  signify  a  certain 
direction  given  to  human  conduct.  /  But 
it  seems  that,  for  our  philosopher,  the 
question  of  education  presents  a  particu- 
lar importance.  Education  is  distinc- 
tively the  phenomenon  in  which  the 
transformation  is  made  from  theory  to 
practice.  It  is  in  modifying  men  that 
ideas  may  determine  certain  changes 
in  the  course  of  events. >  But  if  Ameri- 
cans in  general  desire  above  all  things 
not  to  be  slaves  of  the  accepted,  not  to 
limit  themselves  to  conformity,  but  to 
make  use  of  it,  William  James  in  particu- 
lar, for  even  stronger  reasons,  possesses 
[94] 


PEDAGOGY 


this  same  mental  disposition,  since  his 
philosophy  depends  upon  the  eternal 
incompleteness  of  things,  and  upon  the 
possibility  that  faith  and  human  will 
may  play  a  role  in  their  history .s 

The  problem  of  education  is  not,  for 
James,  a  simple  application  of  theoretic 
science.  It  is  the  natural  and  logical,  but 
also  original,  consequence  of  the  theory. 
In  fact  the  general  result  to  which  his 
philosophy  leads  is  the  effective  value 
assured  to  the  notion  of  possibility. 
There  is,  according  to  him,  both  within 
and  without  man,  an  infinity  of  real 
possibilities.  The  problem  thus  pre- 
sented to  the  thinker  consists  on  the 
one  hand  in  knowing  how  he  must  go 
to  work  in  order  to  awaken,  develop 
and  render  useful  those  possibilities  in 
themselves  latent;  and  on  the  other  hand, 
in  knowing  what  possibilities  amid  this 
infinite  multitude  it  is  expedient  to  select 
and  in  what  sense  it  is  expedient  to  direct 
their  development.  But,  man  being  the 
creature  in  whom,  for  us,  the  transition 
from  the  possible  to  the  real  begins,  the 
[95] 


WILLIAM     JAMES 


problem  is,  before  all  things,  the  problem 
of  human  education. 

The  very  reason  which,  with  James, 
makes  the  pedagogical  problem  the  nat- 
ural conclusion  of  philosophic  research, 
determines  the  exact  relation  of  pedagogy 
to  the  theoretic  judgments  upon  which 
it  depends. 

In  the  greater  number  of  systems, 
whatever  they  may  be,  pedagogy  tends  to 
become  reduced  to  a  mechanical  applica- 
tion of  the  principles  proposed  by  the 
corresponding  theoretical  sciences.  In 
vain  we  descant  upon  the  difference 
between  science  and  art.  Failing  a  cor- 
rect principle,  art,  in  fact,  sees  itself 
bandied  about  between  chance  and  the 
tyranny  of  rules.  With  James,  art  is 
fundamentally  a  different  thing  from 
science;  it  is  more  comprehensive.  Every 
theoretical  judgment,  every  concept,  is 
an  extract,  a  part,  more  or  less  imper- 
fect, of  some  reality;  the  product  of  art 
is  a  reality.  In  the  light  of  the  formulas 
which  indicate  certain  conditions  for  its 
realization,  the  living  work  contains  some- 
[96] 


PEDAGOGY 


thing  really  new,  irreducible,  unknow- 
able a  priori  by  pure  theory.  And  no 
longer  does  it  reduce  itself  to  a  chance 
mixture  of  concepts,  to  an  issue,  an 
empty  hypothesis  imagined  in  order  to 
confer  a  semblance  of  creative  power 
upon  the  mechanism,  and  in  this  way 
render  it  capable  of  giving  to  certain 
things  an  air  of  originality.  There  exist 
real  beings,  effectively  individual  and 
active,  who,  in  realizing  their  powers  by 
means  of  actualities,  overstep  the  bounds 
of  science,  without,  for  all  that,  abandon- 
ing themselves  to  the  caprices  of  chance. 

On  the  other  hand,  there  is  no  conflict 
between  the  ideal  order  pursued  by  the 
active  subject,  and  the  real  order  where 
original  action  must  come  in.  Natural 
laws  are  barriers  which  the  subject  could 
not  overleap  with  impunity,  but  on  this 
side  of  those  barriers  a  place  always 
remains  open  for  free  action. 

Yet  if  pedagogy  depends  upon  science, 

particularly  upon  psychology,  it  is  neither 

a  simple  application  of  science,  nor  is  it 

a  practice  given  over  in  its  distinctive 

[97] 

8 


WILLIAM     JAMES 


part  to  fantasy  and  caprice;  it  is  in  the 
true  sense  of  the  word  an  art,  using  science 
with  intelligence  and  with  freedom. 


William  James's  pedagogy  has  the  re- 
markable characteristic  of  not  propound- 
ing in  the  beginning  the  problem  of  an 
end.  >  Do  we  know  a  priori  if  our  being 
has  any  destination,  if  any  duty  is 
imposed  upon  our  will?  For  one  who 
believes  only  in  experience,  the  only 
legitimate  point  of  departure  is  the 
reality  which  first  strikes  our  attention. 
And  this  reality,  in  the  order  of  the 
psychic  life,  is  the  dependence  of  the 
soul  upon  the  bodily  mechanisnv^While 
Plato  and  Aristotle  give  the  first  place 
to  the  rational  part  of  the  human 
spirit,  the  psychology  of  James  gives 
this  place  to  the  active  part,  and  accord- 
ingly makes  biology  the  basis  of  psy- 
chology. > 

Human  education,  then,  should  be 
above  all  things  mechanical./  It  con- 
[98] 


PEDAGOGY 


sists,  in  this  sense,  in  developing  in  the 
individual  certain  habits,  in  employing 
therefor,  according  to  the  instructions  of 
science,  all  appropriate  means/? 

The  habits,  the  acquisition  of  which 
is  most  necessary,  are  evidently  those 
which  relate  to  the  conservation  and 
the  normal  development  of  the  organism 
and  of  the  psychic  functions. 

But  it  is  important  to  observe  that 
man  has  the  faculty  of  acquiring  a  mass 
of  habits  of  which  originally  he  did 
not  possess  a  single  rudiment.  -Jt  is 
useful  for  him  to  acquire  a  great  variety 
of  habits.  Every  habit  is  a  power,  and 
the  more  powers  a  man  has  at  his  disposal, 
the  more  capable  he  is  of  various  activ- 
ities, the  more  fully  he  will  live.v.  We 
may  then  lay  down  this  fundamental 
maxim:  no  acquisition  without  reaction; 
no  impression  without  correlative  ex- 
pression. x  Everything  taught  to  a  pupil 
is  to  be  for  him  the  point  of  departure 
of  a  certain  habit,  is  to  determine  in  his 
organism  a  certain  display  of  activity. 

On  the  other  hand,  it  is  important 
[99] 


WILLIAM     JAMES 


that  these  habits  should  be  possibilities, 
powers  at  the  service  of  man,  not  fatali- 
ties which  tyrannize  over  him.  The  edu- 
cator must  take  care,  then,  to  maintain 
in  the  soul  the  suppleness,  the  power 
of  adaptation,  of  change,  of  acquisi- 
tion, of  experiment  which  is  its  privilege. 
The  very  multiplicity  and  diversity  of 
habits  will  contribute  to  render  them 
more  tractable. 

In  seeing  James  begin  thus  by  setting 
up  an  automaton  in  order  to  induce  in 
it,  through  the  influence  of  the  physical 
upon  the  psychic,  certain  mental  deter- 
minations, Pascal's  famous  exhortation 
is  recalled:  "Act  always  as  if  you  believe; 
take  the  holy  water  and  have  masses 
said;  naturally  that  will  make  you 
believe  and  stupefy  you." 

But  in  spite  of  the  resemblance,  the 
difference  is  great.  Pascal  considers  the 
case  of  a  man  whose  reason  leads  him 
to  believe  and  who  nevertheless  cannot 
do  so.  The  obstacle,  according  to  him, 
is  in  the  passions  which  prevent  the  heart 
obeying  the  reason.  He  seeks,  therefore, 
[100] 


PEDAGOGY 


the  means  of  subduing  these  passions, 
and  of  restoring  to  itself  the  mind  which 
had  allowed  itself  to  be  led  astray  by 
their  seduction.  He  utilizes,  in  this  sense, 
the  influence  of  acts  upon  feelings.  The 
habit  of  material  obedience  reacting  upon 
the  desires  of  the  heart  will  render  it  docile 
and  at  the  same  time  draw  away  the 
mind,  which  it  has  deluded,  from  its 
stupid  contentment  with  itself  and  its 
pretentious  subtleties. 

Contrary  to  Pascal,  James  in  this 
first  phase  of  education  recognizes  man 
only  as  automaton^  He  does  not  indicate 
the  method  of  employing  the  automaton 
so  as  to  make  the  heart  execute  the  com- 
mand of  the  reason;  he  only  aims  at 
giving  to  the  human  automaton  all  the 
plasticity,  power  and  perfection  of  which 
it  is  capable,  precisely  in  so  far  as  it  is 
automaton.  There  are  within  it  cer- 
tain potentialities,  certain  latent  forces. 
The  only  question,  so  far,  is  to  know  how 
these  potentialities  may  be  awakened 
from  their  sleep  and  brought  to  the  state 
of  organic  forces,  immediately  capable 
[101] 


WILLIAM     JAMES 


of  psychic  effects.  It  is  a  question  of 
the  creation  of  psychic  faculties,  as 
numerous  and  as  varied  as  possible. 
What  moral  tendencies  ought  to  be 
sought  for  elsewhere?  Has  the  human 
life  any  other  purpose  than  its  own 
preservation  and  the  unbridled  exercise 
of  its  powers?  At  this  point  these  prob- 
lems do  not  yet  arise,  and  James  presents 
them  only  if  experience  leads  him  to 
do  so. 


The  mechanical  training  of  the  organ- 
ism and  of  the  activity  is,  however,  only 
the  first  stage  of  education. 

In  fact,  a  training  which  has  in  view 
the  human  spirit,  neither  is  nor  can  be 
an  entirely  mechanical  operation  con- 
stituting in  itself  alone  something  final 
and  complete.  Who  says  consciousness 
says  election,  choice  with  the  view  of  adap- 
tation; and  no  sooner  does  a  phenomenon 
take  a  psychological  form  than  it  con- 
tains something  other  than  the  mechan- 
ical resultant  of  its  material  conditions. 
[102] 


PEDAGOGY 


But  from  the  very  fact  that  conscious- 
ness selects  as  soon  as  it  begins  to  exert 
itself,  it  tends  to  select  in  a  more  and 
more  suitable  way.  For  it  makes  use, 
in  this  case,  of  another  instrument  than 
experience  and  instinct  pure  and  simple. 
This  instrument  is  the  idea.  Thanks 
to  the  idea,  or  mental  representation  of 
a  determined  state  of  consciousness  and 
of  its  habitual  results,  the  ego  can  transfer 
by  association,  to  some  useful  act  which 
leaves  it  indifferent,  the  interest  which 
at  the  time  attaches  itself  to  some  other 
act,  and  thus  procure  for  its  power  of 
selection  a  new  ease  and  suppleness. 

Now,  encountering  thus,  beyond  the 
mechanism,  the  idea  in  the  human  soul, 
an  educator  open  to  the  suggestions  of 
experience  will  make  use  of  this  different 
kind  of  instrument  in  order  to  increase 
the  power  and  excellence  of  the  human 
being. 

The  idea  makes  some  very  remarkable 

operations  possible.     It  permits  us,  first: 

to  preserve  the  traces  of  the  past;  second: 

to  represent  to  ourselves  some  new  phe- 

[103] 


WILLIAM     JAMES 


nomenon  which  is  so  far  only  a  possibility ; 
third :  to  employ  the  resources  bequeathed 
us  by  the  past  in  order  to  realize  this 
novelty. 

The  idea  is  thus  the  connecting  link 
between  the  old  and  the  new,  between 
conservation  and  creation.  By  its  means, 
man,  freed  from  physiological  fatality, 
makes  use  of  the  psychic  mechanism, 
that  first  stage  of  conscious  life,  for  the 
realization  of  a  form  of  superior  existence. 
What  was  an  obstacle  becomes  a  means. 

It  is  thus  that  in  considering  the  power, 
not  only  of  the  organism,  but  of  the  idea, 
that  is  to  say  in  enlarging  its  field  of 
observation,  in  going  from  the  part  to 
the  whole,  we  see  the  whole  react  upon 
the  part,  and  so  are  led  to  correct  the 
conception  of  the  human  spirit  as  the 
exclusive  consideration  of  the  part  had 
been  able  to  suggest  it.  The  role  which 
the  idea  plays  in  our  life  teaches  us  that 
the  physiological  mechanism  is  in  no  way 
inflexible,  that  it  shows,  on  the  contrary, 
a  certain  suppleness,  and  that  it  may, 
in  some  measure,  modify  itself  so  as  to 
[104] 


PEDAGOGY 


offer  the  requisite  material  conditions  for 
a  broader  and  higher  life. 

Thus,  reasoned  and  intellectual  edu- 
cation is  added  naturally  to  the  phys- 
iological and  mechanical.  The  former 
teaches  man  to  dominate  the  physical 
mechanism.  It  should  also  teach  him 
to  maintain  the  freedom  of  his  intelligence 
with  regard  to  a  new  mechanism,  truly 
intellectual,  which,  following  the  natural 
course  of  things,  tends  to  become  fixed 
and  to  oppose  this  freedom. 

William  James  calls  old-fogyism  some- 
thing like  encrustation,  the  spontaneous 
malady  of  intelligence  which  it  is  impor- 
tant to  prevent  or  to  combat  if  we  desire 
this  faculty  to  fulfil  effectively  its  func- 
tion as  intermediary  between  preserva- 
tion and  progress. 

The  concepts  present  in  our  intelli- 
gence at  a  given  moment  are  so  many 
moulds  which  permit  it  to  receive  and  to 
understand  the  objects  offered  to  it.  But 
in  order  that  we  may  in  some  measure  re- 
alize the  true  nature  of  these  new  objects 
offered  us,  and  in  order  that  we  may  be 
[105] 


WILLIAM     JAMES 


able  to  derive  from  what  we  see  certain 
new  ideas,  it  is  necessary  not  only  that 
we  should  choose  concepts  best  suited  to 
the  given  objects,  but  in  addition,  that 
we  should  subject  the  concepts  them- 
selves to  modifications  demanded  by 
certain  objects  for  which  they  have 
not  been  constructed.  The  old  fogy  is 
a  man  who  has  lost  control  over  his 
concepts;  he  no  longer  knows  how  to 
bend  and  adapt  them;  he  applies  them 
as  they  are  to  the  objects  which  he 
wishes  to  consider;  and  consequently,  he 
understands  the  new  only  in  reducing  it 
to  the  old,  that  is  to  say,  in  denying  it. 
If,  consequently,  he  forms  a  philosophic 
theory  of  his  state  of  mind,  he  tends  to 
admit  as  legitimate  in  the  order  of  con- 
sciousness only  science  properly  so  called, 
that  is,  the  reduction  of  the  unknown  to 
the  known,  of  the  possible  to  the  given, 
of  the  future  to  the  past;  and  he  considers 
illusory  the  existence  of  art  and  of  action 
which  imply  the  creation  of  something 
irreducible  to  the  given.  Old-fogyism, 
says  James,  is  the  habit  of  mind  which 
[106] 


PEDAGOGY 


we  laugh  at  in  old  men;  they  understand 
only  themselves,  and  speak  only  of  them- 
selves. But,  upon  closer  inspection,  we 
find  that  this  state  may  appear  at  any 
age.  There  are  young  and  tender  fogies 
who  are  in  no  way  behind  hardened  old 
men  in  their  inability  to  understand  any- 
thing which  disarranges  their  ideas. 
\  Intellectual  education  is  essentially  the 
preventive  treatment  for  fogyism;  it 
teaches  us  to  enrich  the  mind  with  the 
greatest  possible  number  of  widely  useful 
concepts,  and  at  the  same  time  to  main- 
tain intact  and  virgin,  so  far  as  possible, 
the  faculty  of  adapting  these  concepts, 
the  expression  of  the  past,  to  the  new 
objects  which  constitute  the  interest  of 
the  future^- 


* 
*       * 


Such  is  the  second  phase  of  education; 
to  the  possibility  of  determining  in  accord- 
ance with  what  is  already  realized,  it 
adds  the  possibility  of  determining  in 
accordance  with  purely  ideal  ends.  This 
extension  of  possibilities  is  the  fruit  of 
[107] 


WILLIAM     JAMES 


the  idea,  the  nature  of  which  is  inter- 
mediary between  what  is  and  what  may 
be. 

Is  this  second  the  last  phase?  If  it 
were  we  ought  to  content  ourselves  with 
searching  for  the  new,  for  love  of  the  new 
as  such,  without  trying  to  make  a  choice 
between  novelties.  The  idea,  in  itself,  is 
indifferent  to  the  issues  entrusted  to  it;  it 
casts  in  the  mould  of  the  given,  and  learns 
to  realize  alike  the  evil  and  the  good, 
the  erratic  and  the  ingenious,  the  just 
and  the  unjust.  But  is  action  for  action's 
sake  the  supreme  end?  Can  we  not, 
ought  we  not,  seek  to  determine  the 
objects  toward  which  action  should  tend 
if  it  aspires  to  possess  that  perfection 
of  which,  in  man's  case,  it  is  capable? 

To  this  problem  which  intellectual 
education  itself  leads  us  to  propose  is 
related  a  notion  which  we  find  present 
in  our  consciousness  in  regard  to  every 
one  of  our  actions:  the  notion  of  value. 
The  directing  of  the  will  toward  those 
things  which  have  a  true  value  is  the 
third  phase  in  human  education;  it  is, 
[108] 


PEDAGOGY 


properly  speaking,  the  education  of  action, 
or  moral  education. 

The  point  of  departure  for  this  educa- 
tion is  the  effort  to  cure  a  sort  of  con- 
genital malady  of  human  nature:  the 
blindness  of  every  consciousness  to  that 
which  goes  on  in  the  consciousness  of 
others.  This  is  a  subject  which  William 
James  had  greatly  at  heart,  and  which 
he  treated  with  contagious  enthusiasm  in 
his  celebrated  lecture  to  students:  "On 
a  Certain  Blindness  in  Human  Beings" 
(Talks  to  Teachers,  etc.,  p.  229).  We 
judge  others  by  ourselves;  we  do  not 
understand  them.  We  misjudge  the 
motives  for  their  actions,  their  way  of 
looking  at  life,  the  ideal  which  they 
honour  and  dream  of  incorporating  in 
their  lives.  >  We  assume  that  they  are 
wholly  found  in  the  phrases  which  they 
declaim,  in  order  to  speak  as  we  do  or  to 
assert  themselves  before  the  world  accord- 
ing to  the  fashionable  barbarism,  as  if 
they  themselves  dared  reveal,  or  could 
even  see  clearly,  the  secret  movements 
of  their  own  hearts.  ^> 
[109] 


WILLIAM     JAMES 


Man  is  both  better  and  worse  than 
he  asserts.;  It  would  be  a  much  more 
interesting  thing  than  we  imagine  to 
put  ourselves  sometimes  in  the  place  of 
others.  ,  .We  should  realize,  besides,  that 
truth,  that  goodness,  are  things  too  great, 
too  rich  in  various  elements,  to  be  en- 
compassed by  a  single  individual,  and 
that  thus  a  real  value  may  be  found  in 
feelings  and  conceptions  which  differ 
from  our  own ./->  The  tolerance  which 
we  owe  our  fellow  creatures  is  not  a 
condescension,  a  reprieve  indulgently 
accorded  those  who  do  not  think  as  we 
do  in  order  that  they  may  correct  them- 
selves; it  is  a  strict  duty  and  a  necessity.^ 
Tolerance  is  a  wrong  term;  we  ought 
to  say  sympathy;  it  is  the  opening  of 
the  eyes  of  consciousness;  it  is  the  recog- 
nition of  the  value  which  belongs  to  the 
personalities  of  others  in  the  very  ways 
in  which  they  differ  from  our  own;  it  is, 
in  fine,  the  communion  of  consciousnesses 
in  the  common  effort  to  realize  an  ideal 
which  is  beyond  the  power  of  a  single 
individual,  and  which  calls  for  as  many 
[110] 


PEDAGOGY 


workers  as  possible.  cThe  monistic  point 
of  view  is  a  strange  one  for  little  indi- 
viduals like  ourselves;  the  universe  in 
which  we  live  and  in  which  we  have  the 
opportunity  not  only  to  develop  and  en- 
rich ourselves,  but  to  know,  to  act  and 
to  create,  is  a  pluralistic  universe. 

What  is  it  then,  exactly,  that  we  ought 
to  seek  out,  love  and  aid  in  the  conscious- 
ness of  others?  For  it  is  not  enough  to 
wish  something  other  than  ourselves  in 
order  to  wish  as  we  ought. _  Is  it  possible 
to  determine  with  any  precision  what 
really  constitutes  moral  value,  what 
gives  human  life  its  worth?  To  describe 
in  an  adequate  fashion  the  proposed 
object  of  our  activity  is  a  contradictory 
enterprise,  since  such  an  operation  sup- 
poses that  the  object  in  question  contains 
only  what  is  already  seen,  and  in  conse- 
quence would  be  an  object,  not  of  action, 
but  of  intellection  pure  and  simple. 
But  it  should  be  possible  to  trace  some 
sketch  of  it  if  our  liberty  is  anything  but 
caprice  and  chance. 

For  two  things  are  certain.    In  order 

[mi 


WILLIAM     JAMES 


that  a  human  life  may  be  appreciated 
by  a  consciousness  which  takes  value  for 
its  criterion,  this  life  must,  in  the  first 
place,  exhibit  what  is  called  virtue,  that 
is,  courage,  self-denial,  purity  of  inten- 
tion, perseverance,  good-will.  In  the 
second  place,  it  must  be  consecrated  to 
the  pursuit  of  an  ideal  worthy  of  the 
name. 

And  a  third  condition  must  be  added 
to  these:  that  these  two  conditions 
themselves  be  intimately  united.  Nei- 
ther one  nor  the  other,  taken  separately, 
can  make  a  great  life;  virtue  with- 
out an  ideal  cannot  aspire  to  the  name 
of  heroism;  the  merely  ambitious  man 
displays  virtue,  and  some  scoundrels 
are  capable  of  self-denial;  nor  does  the 
mere  conception  of  an  ideal  suffice  to 
ennoble  man.  What  a  disparity  between 
thought  and  deed!  And  are  not  our 
thoughts  within  us  rather  than  our  very 
selves? 

The  thing  which  gives  value  to  life 
is  virtue,  in  so  far  as  it  is  employed  to 
serve  a  great  cause;  it  is  man  giving 


PEDAGOGY 


himself,  devoting  himself,  to  the  realiza- 
tion of  something  really  higher  than 
himself. 

And  now  shall  we  continue  to  inquire 
what,  precisely,  constitutes  this  higher 
form  of  existence  which  we  call  the  ideal, 
and  what  are,  in  truth,  the  modes  of 
activity  which  we  call  virtues?  Cer- 
tainly it  is  justifiable  to  continue  to 
propose  these  questions,  but  it  is  not  the 
province  of  a  philosophy  of  experience  and 
of  action  to  seek  to  give  a  final  answer, 
as  a  scientific  rationalism  would  do 
VJLife  is,  and  remains,  a  problem,  infinite 
as  itself,  and  which  it  alone  can  progres- 
sively resolve, 


[113] 


CONCLUSION 

HILE  he  was  preparing  to  make 
this  voyage  to  Europe,  his  last  hope, 
the  voyage  from  which  he  was  to  re- 
turn, alas!  only  to  die,  William  James 
applied  himself  to  the  composition  of  a 
resume  of  the  whole  of  his  philosophy 
for  the  use  of  students,  a  book  universally 
desired,  which  he  had  meant  to  entitle, 
Introductory  Text  Book  for  Students  in 
Metaphysics.  I  read  in  Professor  Perry's 
excellent  article  (The  Harvard  Graduates' 
Magazine,  December,  1910)  that  through- 
out the  cruel  sufferings,  the  terrible 
emotions  which  marked  this  journey, 
Professor  James,  who  had  taken  with 
him  the  papers  relative  to  this  book, 
worked  at  it  incessantly,  and  returned 
home  having  made  great  progress.  And 
I  learn  from  Harvard  that  the  work  will 
appear  in  the  Spring  of  1911  under  the 
[114] 


CONCLUSION 


title,  Some  Problems  of  Philosophy.1 
He  deals  specifically  with  certain  meta- 
physical problems:  the  Being,  Percept 
and  Concept,  the  One  and  the  Many,  the 
problem  of  novelty,  faith  and  the  right 
to  believe.  The  style,  in  spite  of  the 
haste  of  its  preparation,  is  more  than  ever 
frank,  simple  and  beautiful.  How  grate- 
ful we  ought  to  be  to  the  master  for  this 
last  benefit;  for  he  alone  could  have 
written  this  universally  desired  resume. 
jJFor  our  part,  the  slightest  article  of 
this  genial  writer  appears  so  rich  in  facts 
and  suggestions,  so  directly  derived  in 
all  its  parts  from  intercourse  with  things 
themselves,  so  charged  with  thoughts 
and  curious  expressions  upon  which  we 
would  like  to  meditate  at  leisure,  that, 
constrained  to  make  a  choice,  we  ask 
ourselves  at  every  step  if  the  views  which 
we  leave  alone  are  not  even  more  interest- 
ing than  those  which  we  take  up^  The 
student  who  rudely  called  Professor 

1  Published,  with  title  given  above,  and  a  sub-title, 
A  Beginning  of  an  Introduction  to  Philosophy,  in  April, 
1911,  by  Longmans,  Green  and  Co. 

[115] 


WILLIAM     JAMES 


James  to  order  because  he  forgot  to 
supply  him  with  material  for  his  examina- 
tion was  right.  James  ignored,  or  rather 
he  condemned,  the  art  of  transforming 
the  mental  activity,  personal  and  in- 
cessant in  his  own  nature,  into  industrial 
products  bought  ready-made  and  given 
up  to  others  untouched  save  by  the 
finger  tips.  He  called  "bald-headed  and 
bald-hearted"  those  students  without  an 
inner  life,  without  vigour  and  without 
enthusiasm,  who  neither  think  nor  investi- 
gate, and  who,  in  order  to  cut  a  figure  at 
graduation,  clothe  their  brains  in  rags 
of  knowledge  like  a  wig  on  an  empty 
skull.  > 

This  is  the  first  very  remarkable  trait  of 
James's  philosophy;  it  is  anti-academic, 
anti-official,  anti-scholastic;  it  is  ad- 
dressed to  all,  it  speaks  the  language  of 
all. 

This  external  characteristic  is  itself 
the  result  of  an  important  inner  char- 
acteristic. William  James  does  not  take 
his  point  of  departure  in  the  concepts 
elaborated  by  former  philosophers  in 
[116] 


CONCLUSION 


order  to  submit  them  to  a  new  elabora- 
tion and  to  form  some  unpublished  com- 
bination of  them.  Even  more  than  in 
the  books  of  philosophers  he  read  in  the 
book  of  nature  and  of  science,  and  in 
the  great  book  of  the  world  and  in  him- 
self. "Concrete,  solid,  thick,"  that  is  to 
say,  full  of  living  reality:  these  were  the 
words  he  employed  to  designate  concep- 
tions worthy  of  interest.  "Abstract," 
in  his  tongue,  implied  the  idea  of  the  facti- 
tious, the  academic,  the  futile. 
^At  this  time,  when  philosophy  seems 
to  be  going  through  a  critical  period, 
notably  because  of  its  more  and  more 
direct  intercourse  with  the  positive 
sciences,  the  shining  example  given  by 
James,  of  a  thought  which,  persuaded 
that  it  is  not  sufficient  unto  itself,  plunges 
eagerly  into  reality,  into  science,  into 
life,  there  to  refresh  and  rejuvenate  itself, 
is  one,  it  would  seem,  to  arouse  universal 
attention.: 

It   is    clear,   moreover,    that   William 
James,  disrespectful  critic  of  great  sys- 
tems, does  not  propose  for  his  own  part 
[117] 


WILLIAM     JAMES 


to  create  a  new  system^  I  do  not  ven- 
ture to  say  that  he  would  have  subscribed 
to  Emerson's  splendid  words:  "  With  con- 
sistency a  great  soul  has  simply  nothing 
to  do."  But  it  is  certain  that  a  logical 
contradiction  scandalized  him  less  than 
an  idea  under  which  it  seemed  to  him 
impossible  to  place  a  fact./  At  bottom 
he  did  not  in  the  least  scorn  logical 
unity,  but  he  placed  it  before  the  mind 
as  a  goal,  and  not  behind  as  a  thing  given. 
In  his  opinion  we  do  not  know  a  priori 
whether  a  logical  unity  exists  in  things, 
but  we  seek  to  see  it  and  to  put  it  there. 
Only  the  result  can  show  in  what  measure 
the  universe  realizes  or  can  realize  it. 
On  the  other  hand,  it  is  very  difficult  to 
affirm  that  what  appears  contradictory 
from  one  point  of  view  will  remain  so 
for  one  who  can  rise  to  a  higher  point  of 
view.  /-It  seems  contradictory  to  say 
that  the  mind  acts  upon  matter,  and  mat- 
ter upon  the  mind.  >This  view,  however, 
answers  faithfully  enough  to  our  first 
experience,  and  it  is  advisable  to  admit 
it  at  least  provisionally.  But  perhaps  a 
[118] 


CONCLUSION 


more  profound  experience  is  capable  of 
weakening,  of  dissolving  even  this  appar- 
ent contradiction. 

The  philosophy  of  James  is  essentially 
free.  It  goes  boldly  forward  with  ex- 
perience as  its  only  guide.  The  result 
of  his  investigation  is  very  remarkable. 

He  starts  from  science  as  if  it  were  in 
itself  all  knowledge,  and  the  very  develop- 
ment of  science  finally  leads  in  his  opinion 
to  a  type  of  speculation  which  at  first 
appeared  to  be  excluded  by  its  own 
method,  viz.,  metaphysics.  ^Psychology 
effects  the  transition. 

Hence  an  original  conception  of  the 
relations  of  metaphysics  and  science. 
Metaphysics  cannot  exist  without  science; 
it  lives  by  it.  But  science  can  neither 
abolish  nor  absorb  metaphysics;  the  lat- 
ter possesses  in  the  presence  of  science 
its  principle  and  its  own  reality,  like  the 
living  creature  in  the  presence  of  the 
substances  by  which  it  is  nourished. 
Several  individuality  and  collective  soli- 
darity —  such  is,  on  the  one  hand  and 
[119] 


WILLIAM     JAMES 


on  the  other  and  under  various  interpreta- 
tions, the  condition  for  science  and  for 
metaphysics. 

The  essential  idea  of  James's  meta- 
physics is  the  identification  of  reality 
with  the  broadest,  completest,  most  pro- 
found and  most  direct  experience;  that 
is  to  say,  with  the  most  intimate  life  of 
consciousness./ 

Die  Geisterwelt  ist  nicht  verschlossen, 
Dein  Sinn  ist  zu,  dein  Herz  ist  tot.1 
This  Swedenborgian  doctrine  seems 
to  inform  the  whole  of  James's  work. 
The  metaphysical  problem  is  that  of 
the  relations,  not  of  phenomenon  to  phe- 
nomenon, or  of  concept  to  concept,  but 
of  being  to  being./  The  blindness  with 
which  we  are  afflicted  in  this  world  in 
regard  to  the  inner  personality  of  other 
men  is  not  incurable.  There  are,  for 
those  who  know  how  to  open  the  eyes 
of  the  mind,  certain  relations  other  than 
the  external  and  mechanical  relations  of 
impenetrable  atoms.  There  are  truly 

1  The  Spirit- World  is  not  closed:  your  mind  is  closed, 
your  heart  is  dead. 

[120] 


CONCLUSION 


inward  relations.  Religious  experience 
lays  hold  on  this  profound  communion. 
Metaphysics  consists  in  taking  an  in- 
creasing cognizance  of  the  world  called 
super-natural,  where  individuality  par- 
takes of  solidarity,  and  in  connecting  it 
more  and  more  directly  with  this  immedi- 
ate and  material  world,  where  the  feeling 
of  our  immediate  needs  is  able  to  con- 
vince us  that  our  destiny  reveals  itself  in 
its  entire ty./  And  in  considering  things 
under  this  aspect,  metaphysics  contrib- 
utes to  make  them  so. 


A  philosophy  very  coherent,  after  all, 
and  one  which  becomes  clearer  and  clearer 
as  it  develops.  Perhaps  upon  one  point, 
however,  the  thought  of  James  was  still 
in  process  of  definition. 

If,  apparently,  he  chose  as  his  device 
the  formula  of  Faust,  Im  Anfang  war  die 
Tat,  "In  the  Beginning  was  the  Deed," 
we  may  ask  what,  after  all,  in  his  eyes,  is 
this  action,  the  origin  of  things?  What 
[121] 


WILLIAM     JAMES 


are  these  spiritual  relations  between  con- 
sciousnesses, the  ultimate  basis  and  in- 
imitable model  of  the  physical  relations 
which  our  sensible  consciousness  per- 
ceives? Do  not  love  and  will  alone 
enter  there  to  the  exclusion  of  the  intel- 
lect? |  If  this  is  true,  should  it  not  be 
said  that  they  are  themselves  only  deeds 
whose  whole  superiority  over  physical 
deeds  is  reduced  to  their  being  more 
inward  and  more  primitive?  Are  these 
relations  simply  data,  that  is  to  say,  in 
any  final  sense,  fortuitous  and  irrational? 
It  would  be  necessary  to  consider  them 
so,  if  the  power  of  co-ordination  which 
we  call  reason  had  no  other  mode  of  exist- 
ence than  this  static  understanding,  the 
chief  pretensions  of  which  James  has 
combated  with  so  much  vigour.  Judging 
by  his  language  on  this  point,  we  might 
believe  at  times  that  reason  itself,  in  the 
totality  of  its  manifestations  and  in  its 
very  essence,  is  reduced  to  have  no  other 
object  than  the  Absolute,  the  One  and 
Unchanging.  /  Reason  in  that  case  would 
be  exclusively  abstract;  and  considered 
[122] 


CONCLUSION 


as  the  norm  of  a  thought  which  aims  at 
grasping  the  concrete,  it  can  only  be  a 
prolific  source  of  error. 
«/It  is  noteworthy, however,  that, dissatis- 
fied, as  philosopher,  with  those  relations 
to  which  science  confines  itself,  in  so  far  as 
these  relations  connect  things  only  super- 
ficially, and  consequently  are  themselves, 
so  far,  only  brute  facts,  James  has  sought 
with  increasing  curiosity  beneath  these 
mechanical  solidarities  for  solidarities  as- 
similated, validated,  corroborated  and  ver- 
ified by  the  inner  and  conscious  thought 
of  human  beings  —  in  a  word,  then,  for 
more  truly  intelligible  ones.  Vjt  would  not, 
therefore,  seem  contrary  to  the  underly- 
ing trend  of  his  philosophy  to  admit,  be- 
hind the  static  reason  of  the  dialecticians, 
behind  the  ready-made  list  of  immutable 
categories,  a  living  and  concrete  reason, 
having  to  do,  not  with  mere  empty  con- 
cepts, but  with  actual  beings,  and  desir- 
ous not  only  of  unity,  of  immutability 
and  of  necessity,  but  also  and  above  all, 
of  free  harmony  and  inward  communion. 
An  interpretation  which  finally  brings 
[123] 


WILLIAM     JAMES 


James'  philosophy  into  the  great  classic 
tradition.y  For  it  was,  indeed,  a  reason 
superior  to  the  pure  logical  understand- 
ing, or  Stavota,  this  vovs  of  Plato  and 
Aristotle,  to  which  belonged,  along  with 
intelligibility,  intelligence,  causality  and 
life.  Certainly  the  Greek  philosophy 
has  for  its  main  object  the  fixation  of 
the  changing,  the  assemblage  of  the 
multiple,  by  subjecting  them  to  deter- 
minate and  stable  ends.'  In  this  philoso- 
phy, moreover,  an  initiative  and  an 
activity  of  spirit  awaken  which,  while 
distinguishing  themselves  from  the  logical 
and  empty  One,  are  not  in  the  least  to 
be  confounded  with  the  fortuitous  and 
automatic  evolution  of  matter.  And  it  is 
in  developing  these  views,  following  the 
neo-platonist,  Plotinus,  that  the  moderns, 
under  the  influence  of  Christianity,  dis- 
engage and  exalt  more  and  more  the 
creative  power  which  rules  the  very  ends 
of  the  world  and  from  which  these  ends 
derive  their  existence,  their .  cohesion, 
their  almost  mathematical  connection, 
their  relative  necessity  and  fixity.  ' 
[124] 


CONCLUSION 


Now  if  this  creative  power  must  be 
conceived  as  superior  to  logical  reason 
which,  like  everything  fixed,  represents 
only  one  moment  of  the  life  of  things, 
seen  from  the  outside  and  artificially 
fixed,  there  is  nothing  to  prevent  its 
being  itself  reason,  reason  supple  and 
alive,  eminently  analogous  to  the  reason, 
at  once  theoretical  and  practical,  sponta- 
neous and  controlled,  that  we  find  within 
ourselves.  /  If  reason,  distinguished  from 
action  in  a  purely  logical  sense,  accord- 
ing to  the  sole  principles  of  identity  and 
of  contradiction,  is  no  more  than  a 
table  of  inert  categories;  and  if  action, 
also  reduced  to  pure  concept,  degenerates 
into  blind  change, fortuitous  and  material: 
reason  and  activity  —  conceived  just  as 
they  are  given  us  in  our  own  experience, 
as  penetrable  one  with  another  and  sus- 
ceptible of  becoming  one  —  essentially 
share  each  other's  nature.  As  reason  is 
related  to  activity,  so  activity  is  related 
to  reason. ' 

Therefore,  to  say,  with  William  James, 
Im  Anfang  war  die  Tat,  is  not  to  signify, 
[125] 


WILLIAM     JAMES 


"  In  the  Beginning  was  the  Deed,"  to  the 
exclusion  of  the  reason.  Whilst  admitting 
this  formula,  nothing  prevents  our  main- 
taining the  great  principle  of  Descartes 
who  also  professed  the  free  creation  of 
the  truth:  "We  should  not  conceive  any 
preference  or  priority  between  the  under- 
standing of  God  and  His  will." 

;-/<,-, -L, 


[126] 


University  of  California.  Los 
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